The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #101926 Message #2060694
Posted By: wysiwyg
25-May-07 - 10:57 AM
Thread Name: BS: Help! My Cat is a Slow Learner
Subject: RE: BS: Help! My Cat is a Slow Learner
What is your goal? If you want him to catch and eat mice-- I mean eat them as motivation to catch and eliminate them-- you can teach him to do that until his age and hormones catch up. How to do it is to get an already-decesaed mouse from the pet store (my son gets them frozen for his snake).
Remove the head, and slit the belly open. (If you are really adventurous, see if you can find and expose the liver.) Leave all of the remains in the catfood dish. The smell releasesd thereby, plus the cue that it's in a food dish, may inspire the cat.
He will probably not knaw on the training mouse, but it may inspire him to sink his teeth a little deeper in the next catch. The blood smell should do it, then, over time.
Our cat took his time learning to tear them open; I never had to use a frozen one myself, but from what my son described with the snake's ability to learn "This Is Food," I would think a cat can learn as well.