The process of educating an animal is arduous, so it requires a lot of patience and calm to be able to carry it out in the most bearable way possible for you and, obviously, for your cat. Now, it is natural that after a tiring day at work, you lose your temper when you find some damage at home or do not let you sleep with its nightly meows.
In this article we want to help you recognize the 5 most common mistakes when scolding a cat so that you can avoid them and better understand your feline. These kinds of situations give rise to disproportionate anger and very inappropriate behaviors towards the animal, which do not solve anything because they are completely incomprehensible to it and can even lead to long-term behavior problems.
1. Not giving you alternatives
Not understanding the natural behavior of the cat is possibly one of the most common causes of conflict in many homes. Many times, there are erroneous expectations about how it should behave, as well as not fully known what its essential needs are. An example of this is not allowing a cat to scratch or huff at something that bothers them, since, indeed, cats need to scratch and communicate. On the contrary, a feline that does not develop many of these behaviors typical of its species clearly indicates that it is not well.
Trying to cancel this kind of behavior, supposedly annoying, through punishment is like not allowing him to eat or breathe. Consequently, the cat will feel stressed and will try to perform these behaviors in an inappropriate way, scratching furniture for example. It is for this reason that it is necessary to re-educate the feline to direct these behaviors in a positive way for you and for him, following the previous example, acquiring a scratcher and redirecting said behavior towards this element.
In the same way, when there are behaviors such as excessive meowing, excessive marking, snorting, etc., there is a cause behind that it is necessary to locate to improve the well-being of your feline, which you will not find by scolding him.
2. Yelling and / or physically assaulting you
The vast majority of cases in which a cat is disproportionately scolded is completely unjustified, since it is not able to understand the reason for your anger or what you can do to avoid it. This implies that the feline only ends up confused and associates this negative experience with you. Consequently, these negative experiences clearly harm your relationship, since your cat will begin to have an emotional response of fear every time it sees you, impairing the formation of a mutual bond based on trust and understanding.
If you are wondering then what is the best way to scold a cat without the use of yelling, you should bear in mind that to educate a cat it is very important to be subtle and avoid generating negative emotions that it may associate with you. Therefore, more than scolding, what you should do is dissuade him from taking inappropriate actions to redirect them correctly. Keep in mind that it is always preferable to opt for positive reinforcement than negative. Therefore, choosing negative reinforcement is one of the main mistakes when scolding a cat.
3. Forcing you to smell your stool and / or urine
Following the previous line, there is a belief that it is necessary to teach a cat his feces and / or urine so that he understands that you do not want him to do it in an inappropriate place. It goes without saying that this kind of scolding is far from forming a learning process to educate him to relieve himself properly in his litter box, this action being therefore unnecessary and cruel intimidation.
In addition, finding the cause of why your cat does not relieve itself properly is also necessary, it may, for example, that the urine outside the tray is due to stress or that it has not learned correctly where its bathroom is.
4. Be incoherent
When educating a cat, it is very important to be consistent in your way of acting. What does this mean? By this we mean that you cannot scold your cat for something that you sometimes allow him to do. For example, if you don’t want him to get on the table, never let him. If, on the other hand, you are sometimes permissive or if someone in your family allows him to climb from time to time, your cat will not understand that there is a cause-effect between his action and your response, a fact that will disorient him and generate insecurity because he won’t be able to understand you and predict your reactions. This also implies being consistent in her education since she is a puppy, that is, do not allow her to do what you do not want her to do as an adult so as not to confuse her.
5. Make it late
Finally, one of the most common mistakes when scolding a cat and that many owners make when wanting to educate their cats is trying to correct them after having taken an action considered inappropriate. For example, scold him once you get home and see that he has done some damage. In these kinds of situations, as much as you understand what your scolding is due to, your cat is simply unable to understand the cause of your anger and will begin to feel insecure with you.
