Teaching My Cat to Talk So He Stops Biting Me

Hey, it’s working.

Malie is a very active, motivated, and social cat. He wants, needs, and craves lots of things: food, attention, food, play, more attention, and more food. Probably in that order. 

I adopted Malie from a local shelter which he was transferred to from Hawaii. Observing how motivated and obsessed he is with catching his bird toy, I imagine he is probably responsible for the endangerment of many Hawaiian bird species in his previous life.

I’ve known about pet communication buttons for a while (thanks social media!) and even got a couple to see if Malie would use them. We started out with a button that said “bird”, our name for his favorite bird string toy, which would prompt a play session with his wand toy. 

All that to say, he loves his bird toy and he quickly associated the “bird” button with the thrill of the hunt. So much so that we had to put the button away so he wouldn’t continuously press it. (Pro tip: that’s not how you should go about using buttons.)

After a couple of years of this dance (taking out the bird button so he presses it for a play session then putting the button away), I decided it was time to add another button. Maybe something a little less motivating so he wouldn’t spam it. He likes attention, so I added the “pets” button. 

Apparently he doesn’t just like attention. He loves it.

We went back to hiding the buttons in between sessions.

(Pro tip: this is really not how it’s supposed to work.)

Another year goes by. I learn a lot from working on the Petspectives team. We (Malie’s humans) are not planning on spending a lot of time away from home (and Malie) for a bit and we don’t have any guests planning to stay over or other potential big stressors. So I decided it’s time to actually do this button thing correctly.

I had bought a full Get Started button kit from Fluent Pet a few months ago knowing that I wanted to go on this journey at some point, but something just kept “getting in the way” of me actually committing. This whole time, Malie has been acting out with several undesirable behaviors: jumping up to nip at our hands, scratching at our pants, bunny kicking our feet, peeing in the bathtub, waking us up at night, and biting at our hands if we were on the computer. I KNEW he was frustrated. Everything he was doing was screaming “I AM NOT GETTING WHAT I NEED” and I really did understand that. So, why the **** did it take me so long to dig into a potential solution?

Well, better late than never. Wish we did it sooner, but we're finally making progress.

Now that we were getting serious, the first step was leaving the buttons out full time. No more putting them away just because we (the humans) weren’t feeling it. Maybe the “bird” sessions were a little lazy on our part or the “pets” required Malie to come to us for that attention, but we still kept the buttons out 24/7.

I expected him to be spamming the buttons all the time and waking us up at all hours of the night. But uhh… he didn’t.

He did push the buttons a lot - but he never used them at night. Even the lazy “bird” sessions during the day were enough to keep him happy and satisfied so he slept until our alarms went off in the morning. During the second day I noticed he wasn’t jumping up and nipping at our hands. A few days went by before I realized that he had stopped bunny kicking our feet and he wasn’t bothering us on the computer nearly as much as he normally would. He went a week without peeing in the tub.

So, let’s keep it going! Let’s add another button!

When I added his next button, he picked it up almost immediately. He loves attention and affection, so I decided his next button would be “Kiss” - which would be kisses to his head (which he loves when he’s seeking affection). I was selfish when I chose this button as the next one - it is very cute.

At the beginning when I introduced Malie’s first button, I made sure to talk to him about everything. “Food is Later” “Bird is All Done” “do you want a Kiss?” “Yes Pets Now” - making sure to emphasize possible button words. Adding the “pets” button was a quick process since we had been talking to him for so long about getting pets.

It’s been about a week since we added the “kiss” button, and I think it’s time for the next one! Tune in for updates!