Training Your Human to Fetch (the Feline Way)

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Hello there furiends.
I have taught my Human to fetch and it occurred to me the other day as I was running her through her paces that I should purrhaps share this information with my feline furiends.

First, it is a cat’s duty to swat every toy they receive under the refrigerator, sofa, the bed and any other place that is hard to get to. Once you have reduced the number of toys in your toy box, you begin phase two of the feline toy procedure.

Stand in front of the object where much of your toy treasure is stashed. Either give a sad meow or make a lackluster attempt to stick your paw underneath. The human will notice and take pity on you and, if you have trained them properly, they will go and find a long object to stick under the piece of furniture to retrieve your toys.

When the human has finished (and make sure they do a thorough job), the floor should look something like this.

Note that I had to prompt The Female Human to get down on her knees and get EVERY item out from under the cabinet.

Normally, your human will survey their work and feel quite good about themselves for retrieving your toys. You must then let the human know you are not impressed, nor is their effort anything special., but something felines expect.

“That’s nice Human. Now let’s go in the bedroom and you can retrieve all the toys I’ve hidden for you there.” – Oliver

I hope this little primer on human training has helped you. Remember, this activity serves three purposes:

  1. A well trained human is a happy human.
  2. You are keeping your humans healthy by providing them an opportunity to get some exercise.
  3. All your hidden toys are retrieved which gives you many more hours of fun swatting them back under the furniture.

20 thoughts on “Training Your Human to Fetch (the Feline Way)”

  1. Hi Oliver,
    Ziggy the cat here. Magnificent article. Training humans is hard and very important work. Poor dears, its not their fault they have such limited capacities. They do their best, although as you note, that’s a low bar. Happy swatting!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

    • Hi Ziggy!
      You are so right. I often wonder if our next “Felines Opine” book should be about training our humans. I might even get some tips from my internet furiends to include.
      Purrs & Head Bonks,
      Oliver

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓

  2. Excellent post Oliver dear furiend! This is why I think of my humans as staff.It is also difficult to train them to dispense treats on command vs some nefarious schedule they only seem to understand, so if you have tips for this type of training, I hope you find time to share them, too.
    Purrseidon

    Like

    Reply ↓

      • Oh meow is me Oliver dear furiend, I’d hoped you’d figured that one out, too! I tried to take purrsonal control, but the disobedient staff then took better security measures, which I still haven’t managed to crack.
        Purrseidon

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply ↓

  5. I am very impressed that there was no dust under there! Nice clean toys coming out from under a piece of furniture would not happen here!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓

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