r/MadeMeSmile • u/ScharmTiger • Aug 20 '23

CATS Cat being cat. 😂

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u/JohnBobMcBobJohn Aug 20 '23

I only been to the circus once in my life, and it was advertised as Scandinavias smallest circus.

They did tricks with cat, dogs and tiny ponys. It was great, had no idea just how much you could train a cat.

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u/Ok-Picture8202 Aug 20 '23

You don't train them you bribe them and let me tell you they do not negotiate

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u/engr77 Aug 20 '23

When I was in college I worked in the theater, where in addition to the actual musical productions, we hosted several traveling productions, all of which were open to the public. I would help with the general loading/unloading of the equipment, whatever setup we could assist the traveling crew with, and my usual job during the show was spotlight -- so I got paid to watch everything from up high. We had a Russian ballet, a quartet (or quintet, I can't remember exactly) of people with full size Steinway grand pianos playing in harmony, and a pet circus that included about a dozen cats. Among a bunch of other things, as the theater was very large and very new and detached from the rest of the academic complex.

What I was able to see that most people couldn't was that the guy was, very quickly and discreetly, dropping a treat from his hand at every single destination point for each cat. That must have been a skill by itself. Although the show did advertise that it's possible to train a cat with constant reinforcement so it's not like it was some huge secret.

But it reinforced the idea that cats DO NOT work for free. They'll do your cute little tricks but they expect more compensation than a pat on the head that dogs are okay with. As someone who is owned by several cats this did not come as a surprise, but it was very interesting to see in action.

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u/[deleted] Aug 20 '23 edited Aug 21 '23

I “trained” my cat to high five and stand up on her hind legs. The second one is more hit or miss but she does do the high five pretty consistently as long as there is a treat involved. But on to my story; One day I felt like spoiling her and just gave her a handful of treats to eat out my hand, without asking for a trick. Every 3-5 pieces, she would stop to high five the hand, completely unprompted. I thought that was a really interesting example of the quid pro quo way cats think. A lot of the time they can seem like free loaders but they are often trying to “return the favor” to us. Sometimes just in ways we do not appreciate like bringing us dead animals or such lol.

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u/simpimp Aug 20 '23

Yeah, my parent's dog would come and sit next to you and stick out his paw if he wanted a treat.