How To Teach Tricks To A Cat

People think that cats don't learn tricks easily, but it is not true. Cats are as willing to learn tricks as dogs are. My late cat learned three tricks I taught and never forgot until the day she passed away. Since I don't have my cat any more, I can't show you her tricks in videos or photos, but here are the steps to teach your cat.

What You Need
First thing you need is a reward for your cat. No animals would work with you if you don't give them a reward. The best reward for teaching a cat is a piece of seaweed. Yes, seaweed used for sushi. Cats love fish and seaweed is soaked with fish smell. Most of cats would love seaweed if you give them once.
For each reward, you can give them a tiny piece, so they don't get full easily and you have many opportunities to teach and enforce the trick. So get a pack of seaweed.


Teaching to shake a paw
When a cat is relaxing, grab her hand gently and shake. After that, give her a piece of seaweed. Repeat that a few times until the cat is willing to put her paw on your palm for a reward. Enforce the command by using the same word, such as "give me your hand" or something. Cat will soon learn that shaking a hand will get her a piece of seaweed. Repeat for half an hour or so for the first day.  For the rest of the week, ask her to give you a paw several times a day with the same command. Do this frequently for the rest of the month and cat learns the trick for life.

Teaching a cat to stand
Once the cat understand how tasty seaweed is, this is easy to teach. Bring a piece of seaweed near her nose and bring the seaweed higher until the cat stands up. Then give her the seaweed for reward. You should use a new command for this such as "stand!". Similar to shaking a paw, patiently work with your cat.

Summary
Seaweed, patient and repeated command will teach your cat any simple tricks easily. I also taught my cat to roll over. With the command and gesture, my cat did any of these tricks when I asked. Just don't forget the reward at the end!