Negotiating with a cat

It's clear that my new 10-year-old cat Bella has learned that she sometimes has to use her claws and teeth to defend herself or get what she wants from her human, sometimes even engaging in lightning attacks. We are still learning how to negotiate with each other how we will live in this space we must share. It's harder since we cannot communicate in words, and have to learn from actions.

I guess this is good training for how to deal with people, including some mental health professionals, who have unresolved issues and do not know that that is the case. It can be quite tough.

Negotiating with a cat????? Good Luck. You are gonna need it.

is it even possible to do this? i was always under the impression we do what they say

Heh, negotiating with them is quite difficult. Cats aren't known for being reasonable! I'm pretty unreasonable sometimes too, so me and my cats get into little spats, especially the little brat... Sometimes he'll even go be naughty after such a spat or if I ignore him. The other one is pretty good about doing what hooman wants him to do - I got pretty lucky with him being such a good boy. It sort of evens out how naughty his brother is...

i have 'discovered' that a spray bottle and a throw pillow are good substitutes for claws and teeth.... i have yet to find anything that is more persuasive than urine.... O.O

In order to negotiate with cats, you have to make it worth their while Out of the 5 cats I've had, only 1 couldn't be negotiated with - generally if you offer them tasty food in exchange for doing what you're asking of them, if the food is tasty enough they'll do as they're told but they have to have the food as soon as they've done the behaviour you want or they won't "join the dots" between the behaviour and them getting the tasty food

The one who couldn't be negotiated with was my elderly male called Tom, he tended to bite people in order to get what he wanted so it wasn't a good idea to try negotiating with him using food unless you wanted to get bit even more

I've usually found that feline negotiations tend to more closely resemble terms of surrender, where the cat may begrudgingly do something close to what you ask, in exchange for some valuable commodity, such as tasty snacks, or not sitting on top of the book that you're trying to read.

More effective negotiations involve either knowledge of whatever way the cat most enjoys being stroked/pampered, or possession of high grade catnip...