How to communicate with a cat?

Question

Is there any way to communicate with a cat? For example, telling it to do something or stopping it from getting into mischief? How can I understand what the cat is trying to tell me with the 'meows' it makes?

Answer 1

As regards interpreting your cat's meows my answer here is a good place to start (not that I'm biased or anything!)

When it comes to you communicating your wishes to your cat this gets quite tricky, contrary to popular belief it is possible to train most cats to respond to commands. It's not as quick and easy as it is with dogs but it's not impossible. The most common and successful method is generally considered to be clicker training where you use a small device called a "clicker" that (as it's name implies) makes a small click sound when you press a button and you use clicks from it to mark when your cat performs the desired action followed with treats to ensure the cat knows that doing the requested action results in rewards.

It's worth noting that it's much easier to train cats to do positive things then it is to train them out of doing negative ones, they generally don't respond well to discipline from you and are much more likely to end up stressed out or afraid of you then they are to simply learn so creating negative connotations with an action - ideally ones that aren't seen to be coming from you directly is the best approach. There's lots of questions and useful answers on that subject here on Pets.SE already so I won't go into that here.