by Janet Farricelli CPDT-KA

Created on: January 21, 2009   Last Updated: January 23, 2009

Think dogs are the only animals good at fetching? Think twice as the astute felines are upgrading their status with their new array of tricks and quirky antics. Cats are after all, natural retrievers: have you ever had a cat catch a mouse and bring it to your door step as a unique, gift of friendship and loyalty? Of course, should you be considering to teach your cat to fetch, the object being tossed and retrieved must be much more desirable!

In order to teach a cat to fetch you will need three, actually four components:

1) a cat that will fetch

2) an object to be fetched

3) something that makes fetching worthy (tasty treats work wonders)

4) a person for the fetching cat to bring the fetched object to, in exchange for something making fetching worthy.

It may sound more complicated than thought, but in reality teaching a cat to fetch may be pretty easy, you just need some time on hand and lots of patience!

In order to learn well, your cat needs to be in a familiar surrounding with not many distractions going on. If you have guests over and you want to show them how well your cat fetches he/she will very likely get stage fear. This actually has happened to me personally, I invited over some guests and upon asking my cat to do the trick my cat acted out as if she had a "senior moment" and went just about her business.

To start teaching your cat to effectively fetch,you want to obviously start out by tossing the toy. Furry mice work well, but I have found that some rolled up tin foil shaped almost like a chicken leg with an extension for the cat to use to pick it up with their mouth works equally well. Now follow these steps carefully:

Upon the cat picking up the toy, call the cat to you. If the cat comes but leaves the toy behind try to toss it again and go towards the cat and tell the cat to drop the toy by offering a treat. Repeat this exercise several times without over doing it or your cat may lose focus. What you are doing is teaching the cat to chase the toy and give it up to you on command.

As you continue to toss the toy and go retrieve it, one day suddenly stop going towards the cat. Now the cat may come to you upon calling him/her because it really would like to exchange the toy for that tasty treat you have. Once the cat gets it done right, praise lavishly and repeat until the cat fetches spontaneously.

After repeating several times you may start slacking on the rewards and only offer the treats sparingly. The cat must at this point simply play fetch just for the joy of it. However you must be warned that there may be two potential outcomes: 1) the game may become habit forming, and your cat may be coming to you with the toy quite more often than you may really want and 2) the cat cares less about fetching and with its typical superiority complex decides it is a game left for stupid dogs.

If your cat enjoys fetch, it is a great way for kitty to get its good dose of exercise. It is also a pretty cool trick to show your dog lover friends that cats are capable as dogs in performing tricks. However, as mentioned above, you must be warned that cats may get stage fear and firmly refuse to perform the trick in front of friends.

The main reason why we do not see many cats that fetch is because owners are often intimidated when it come to teaching their cats tricks. They have in mind the myth that cats are not trainable and that they are unlike dogs. Truth is, if cats are shown properly how to learn, very likely (if they want to) they will "pick up" (pun intended!) pretty swiftly.

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