Pam wrote:
[quote=mattkime]
Cats are much more trainable than we give them credit.
[quote=Pam]
[quote=billb]
Just "train" the cat
after all, pets don't have bad habits - they have bad owners.
That's a fact.
Obviously said by a dog owner

One can only "train" a cat to a certain point. The rest is up to the cat.
As I said, to a point. Dogs inherently want to please their owner, follow the alpha dog. Cats do not have that drive at the same level as dogs.
We lived in a nice residential neighborhood when I was a kid growing up, and we had pretty good luck w/ training cats... the more responsible the cat was, the more time they got to spend in the house. Most were good, but a couple were primarily outdoor cats. I'm pretty sure "Leo" was a very small human, disguised as a medium-sized red tabby, as he was the best trained, best behaved cat in the history of cats. He'd even run errands for us, and never scratched anything he wasn't supposed to. His only (minor and humorous) flaw, was that he didn't realize that he shed a little bit, and that even at about 16-17 pounds, he left a dent in the down topped cushions on the living room couch :-). He knew he wasn't supposed to hang out in the living room unless people were there, but he loved the overstuffed couch and chair, even when the room was empty... he knew enough to hide when he heard, or sensed, the parents coming, but dear old mom was pretty adept at scoping out the dent in the cushion and the few distinctive hairs he inadvertently would leave behind. He was smart enough to try and deny that he had been in the living room when he wasn't supposed to. If all cats were like Leo, cats would've already taken over the world.
Pam, I think that dogs have become more domesticated than cats, and have become more dependent on humans than their feline counterparts... it would be interesting to find some totally uncivilized outcrop that had both wild dogs and wild cats, and see which species could be domesticated the quickest and the best, based on no given roles for them, such as those that exist in our society today. Maybe dogs would bury their poop, and cats would want to please their new owners more....
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