Teaching a Devon Rex to Come When Called

I specifically wanted Devon Rexes as they're known for their intelligence and love of people. I'd trained my gorgeous Irish Setter, Lola, as a pup to do a whole range of tricks and she can sit, bow, beg, shake hands, play dead and growl or bark on command. Having a dog that can do all this is pretty cool and always a hit with friends, but the best thing about training her was the effect it had on our relationship.

Bowie and Blue playing in the kitchen

Lola LOVED our training sessions and it was a great way to burn off her extra puppyish energy. I also found it helped us to bond more and we have a stronger relationship because of it. So I wanted to do the same with my cats.

Apart from toilet training them (read more here) and training them to walk on the lead (read more here) we've been working on getting them to sit on command and come when called. Bowie is also learning to fetch but Blue doesn't seem to get that one yet!

It's still early days and they're still young but our training sessions are going so well!  Most people are pretty cynical about training cats and think it can't be done, but think about it for a moment. Every cat I've ever known has been able to recognise the sound of his food bowl being filled in the kitchen from 50 paces and comes flying in to find out what's for dinner. They hear a noise, associate it with something nice and run over to investigate. All you need to do is harness that natural instinct and get them to do it on a given prompt.

First pick your command. I've settled on whistling to get my boys to come to me. When I start letting them outside to play they'll be able to hear it from a distance and it's easily distinguished from all the other voice commands I'll be teaching them.

I started by standing a few metres away from them and giving the command. Both of them are naturally inquisitive and came right over to see what was going on. I gave them both a treat and a fuss and walked away. A few metres away again, I repeated the command and they both came running so got another treat.

After this, it got a bit tricky... I couldn't get them to stop following me! After a while of them running all over the house after me, they finally gave up and sat down. I repeated the command. Bowie came straight over but Blue hung back. When Blue saw Bowie getting his reward, he also came over to demand his but I didn't give him one. After all, I'm trying to teach them to come on command, not to come whenever they feel like it!

Beautiful Blue and his wrinkly forehead

So we've been repeating this for the past few days with me gradually making things harder each time. I'll started by increasing the distance from them when I asked them to come ,then to call them from another room or whistle for them without warning when they're doing something else. It doesn't always work and sometimes I only get one come on command or find that they both ignore me. However, they have gone from coming 50% of the time to about 90% of the time now and get better every day. I'm confident in a week or so we'll have that up to 99% which I'll be more than happy with.

I have found that training always goes better when they're in "play mode" as they treat it all like a big game and respond far better. You do have to know when to stop. My boys are still young and sleep about 20 hours a day and when they get tired or bored it makes things a lot harder, so I limit our training sessions to 10 minutes two or three times a day. It's far nicer for all three of us if we're all motivated and enjoying ourselves after all. Sometimes when I've decided it's time to call it quits, they disagree and climb my legs or jump all over me until I start "playing" with them again.

They love their training sessions and I've found that they are definitely much more responsive and affectionate towards me since we started, so everyone is happy!