Temple Grandin Cat Quotations

I know a lot of animal communicators and I think a lot of them are just good behaviorists because they pick up on a lot little posture things like how the eyes look, the posture of the cat ears, is it tense? They're picking up just a lot of their body cues from the dog, the cat or the horse.

You got barn cats and you want to make them tamed, you need to get them as kittens.

Dogs serve people, but people serve cats.

Basically when it comes to autistic kids and animals there's kind of three ways that they work, some of them are instant best buddies, they understand a cat, they understand a dog - they're best studies with it, they just know how to communicate with it. Then there's other kids that begin with a little bit of fear of the cat or the dog, but then they begin to like it and then there are other kids where you have a sensory problem - the cat meows and it hurts their ears, so they want to stay away from the cat because you never know when he might meow.

Giving those animals [in shelter] quality time - now, I have been in some of the shelters where the cats have been in group housing. Well if you have a cat that never gets out of sternal recumbency, now what that means is that [inaudible] - that's a stressed cat. If they lay on their side, then they are not stressed out.

If you get a little kitty and he's down on the bottom, and he's laying on his chest, you know tucked up underneath, then that cat is not relaxed.

Once you can do it all after a lot training with no food reward, the dog is more social. I am not saying that cats are totally unsocial but dogs are more social.

A cat you train with clicker training and what you've got to do is pair the click with a food reward. And he's doing the stuff because you get a food reward.

A cat can be social, but a dog, we've bred this hyper social animal that's really truly different and will do stuff for us just to please us with praise and stroking.

here's certain things that are similar to cats and dogs. Dogs are just hyper social and they have a want to please you way more than a cat does.

You could train cats do things, a lot of people don't think cats aren't trainable. Cats can be trusted just a friend.

Cats are great with clicker training. There's a great video you can get called "Clicker Magic". There's a scene in that video where a cat is trained to go through a mini dog agility course - it's all done with food motivation and clicker training. You can train them to do all sorts of thing.

I get asked a lot why cats mess outside the litter box. The simplest thing is if you have more than one cat and you have two litter boxes, don't put them right next to each other.

We've had several cats. I had a cat when I was a kid. My Aunt had lots of cats and I got lots of calls about cats.

It might have something to do with - you know, I am just thinking that if I am the cat, when I'm pooping, you know, I've got to strain a little bit more and maybe that affects how the kitty litter feels on my paws. I'd try a different sub straight, or something like that - make sure it's not slippery.

Sometimes cats just avoid using a litter box but that's kind of strange. Most time people ask me why they go outside the litter box period.

Different cats don't like certain litter. They also don't like an unstable floor, no animal like's unstable floor. So if you put a thin piece of plastic down under a litter box and the cat walks on it and starts to slip, they don't like that. Any animal doesn't like an unstable floor.

I want to make sure to fix these obvious things - like keeping the box CLEAN! Another thing that might affect this is if you put the litter box in a laundry room where people are walking by there all the time, the cat might feel kinda too exposed. When you gotta poop, you know, it takes a little longer. You want a little more privacy.

Some cats don't like different types of kitty litter. So might try different types of kitty litter sometimes that works. You know, they don't like one type that sticks to the paws and they don't like it.

I mean, you can tame feral cats now, but you are never gonna get them like a cat that's been socialized at a very young age