You should never use a water spray bottle as a method for training cats

Because dogs never chew on furniture, right?

I had a dog that chewed the carpet...

a dog at one of our rental properties ate the metal garage door...

I have both a cat and a dog. From personal experience, dogs cause way more damage.

My dog ate my couch, pulled open my carpet, and chewed on my mom's phone.

One of my pit bulls had a taste for Harry Potter books. We had to reimburse the school library twice because my brothers left their checked out books in reach. Funny thing is, he'd ignore other books, but that series was always the ones he went for.

That dog had no taste. He should have gone for Twilight books.

All I read when I hear that a dog is worse is that they were not properly trained. It's never entirely the animals fault when we do not teach them otherwise.

Are you sure? That's how my friend trained his cat when she was young, and now she is extremely well behaved...

i) One of my cats actually loves tinfoil. ii) Water actually worked for my cats. iii) My cats hate catnip

I put catnip spray on the scratching post and my cat just licks it off and rubs his head on it, doesn't make him want to scratch it. But my cat is kinda weird, so might just be him.

I think it's really dependent on how the animal takes it. You are also supposedly never supposed to strike your animal but whenever my dog gets into something he knows he shouldn't we swat him on the nose or the rear and he doesn't do it again... Problem solved.

#14 all cats are different some do actually like tin foil but it usually does work for most cats

#9 usually cats are well behaved anyway, the spray bottle probably didn't stop the cat doing things, the cat most likely would have turned out well behaved with or without the spray bottle, but when you spray the cat it doesn't think "gee i shouldn't have done what i just did" it thinks "what the fuck are you doing how dare you do that what the fuck"

#16 dogs are different to cats, they have very different ways of thinking, dogs have almost twice the amount of brain neurones that cats do, as their brains need to be more developed to work in a pack, and hitting the dog on the nose is similar to what the alpha of the pack would do, cats on the other hand are not pack animals and if you try to train them through hitting their nose, spraying them, etc, they'll literally just be like "what the fuck are you doing", just as they don't understand why you give them a treat when they do something right, they wont understand why you're punishing them if they do something wrong

@23 What you're saying makes sense, but if that's true, how come OP's cat clearly linked the scratching of objects to her getting a treat as a reward?

My cat learned just fine with the spray bottle. After the first month, all we have to do is pick it up if she's doing something she's not supposed to do and she stops. I haven't sprayed her sense she was little, and she's 8 now.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell? Association works with both cats and dogs, from positive AND negative reinforcement.

Some cats are smarter than others and do understand.

Ha! I have this one cat that won't stop doing certain things (waking me at 5am, meowing nonstop, jumping on tables while we eat or work) and the spray bottle is the ONLY thing that gets her to stop sometimes. Now she knows and I dont have to spray her, just hold it up. I always give her a warning first. Her personality is super persistent; I never use it on my other cat. I hate doing it, but it beats being mad at her all the time or just letting her torture people.

Bottom line to this entire comment chain: Cats aren't stupid, neither are a majority of other animals for that matter. So don't assume you know what an animal is thinking, every animal is different, much like humans (I mean we are animals too, despite our arrogance) so different tactics and outcomes should be expected.

@32, Intended or not, (assuming intended) that was just a beautiful pun, and I commend you on that.

It probably depends on the individual and how they take to water. I've had a cat that, when we tried the spray bottle on, freaked out like a raccoon. And my family has had cats who, while not liking it, will take baths. So it just depends on the cat, try it once, if it shows signs of working, good. But always expect the cat to go into a colossal rage when you do it.

#14 I feel like we might have the same cats.

just what I came in to say! you need to find an outside deterrent to discourage bad behavior, otherwise they just get scared of you, rather than understand not to do the thing!

Never ever hit a cat no matter how lightly, you are putting in energy to the cat which will build up until the cat explodes- not literally- but the cat will lash out. Cats are very sensitive to energy and hitting the cat is not positive energy and the cat will just think "what the heck are you doing"

Haha what an odd phrase. "I'm sorry officer! I was only beating her lightly!"

Someone did that to my dog when she was a puppy and now she is afaid of anything that makes a noise like that. Even soda cans opening. She'll run away with her tail between her legs. All animals are different.

I give my dogs treats when they go to the bathroom outside. Going to the bathroom is just as natural as cats scratching, but they learn where it is appropriate to scratch, and go to the bathroom if they are rewarded when they do it in the right spot. Hell, people reward their children for going to the bathroom on a potty, while training them. So no, rewarding proper behavior during a training period does not always go wrong.

I hope you're being sarcastic because shaping a natural behavior is an excellent method of training. I can't remember the correct terminology and I can't speak on training cats, but it works very well for dogs and horses. By giving my dog a treat when he sneezed and putting a command to it, I was able to teach him to sneeze on command. He bares his teeth when he plays and I shaped it into a smile command. That's how most people teach their dogs to speak on command. Horses do something called "flehmen". It's when they lift their upper lip and expose those big front teeth. It's a natural behavior you see stallions do when they scent a mare, but all horses will do it when they smell something they want to get a better smell of. It can be anything from a new horse to a perfume to a cheese sandwich. If it interests them enough, they'll lift that lip. By rewarding my Fjord when he did it, I was also able to put a smile command to it. If it was something that always went wrong, no one would ever use it to teach an animal anything. You just have to know how to use it. OP didn't necessarily do anything wrong. Again, I don't know a thing about training cats, but the cat just doesn't understand what OP is asking yet. With persistence and some adjustment, the cat will probably eventually figure out that just the scratching isn't what's getting it the treat.