Most people know about Pavlov’s Dog. But do you know about Pavlov’s cat?
The Pavlov dog experiment found that if you reinforced a behavior over and over through a food reward, you could get a dog to do certain things. Get the dog to salivate when you issued a command.
Humans are the same way. If we do something repeatedly and get a reward, we’ll go through the same action to make sure we get that bonus.
Our household, in contrast to a dog or human, has Pavlov’s cat. His name is Smudge. He has determined that multiple actions on his part will lead to positive consequences.
For example, like most felines, he likes to drink from running water. In a modern home, that means he wants you to turn on the tap, so he can lap from the faucet (I can only presume that these furry creatures had some native sense that tap water equates to a stream, river or brook, so they prefer that to lapping out of a dish, which would equate to a pond or lake).
Getting to the kitchen in the morning, I pop the dog food can to feed the hounds and Smudge leaps to the counter. What does he want? Turn the faucet on.
So I give him what he wants, and he starts tonguing the running water. Sometimes he toys with me and turns his back on this morning gift, but if I shut the water off, he gives me a look and paws the tap until I twist it back on.
It isn’t just at the kitchen sink where he pulls this routine. The bathtub works nicely, too.
Go into the bathroom to sit down and take care of business and Smudge hears you. He comes bounding, leaps up onto the bathtub and sticks his head under the faucet. He looks at you while you’re unrolling toilet paper and flushing, “What’s taking you so long?”
All it takes is a certain sound and he figures this out. Is it the creak of the toilet seat as you sit down? How does he know you’re doing number one or number two?
We keep grated cheese on hand for many different dishes. If I pull out the bag and he is anywhere within cat hearing vicinity, he bounds into the room. What incites Pavlov’s cat in this instance? It has to be the crinkling of the plastic as you pull open the bag to stick your hand in and grab some cheese.
He knows you’ll be holding some of those tasty morsels when he hears the plastic crinkle. I wonder if he salivates.
One of our other cats is more manipulative, but she is just as much a Pavlov cat as Smudge. She decides to mournfully manipulate my wife with meows each morning until she gets some cream. Her senses are attuned to the scraping of a small plastic receptacle sliding along the floor and the pouring of a small amount of cream into that container. Make any of those sounds and she comes running. God forbid you don’t, because she’ll let you know about that failure if you don’t service her needs first thing in the morning.
We’ve all got a little bit of Pavlov in us, whether we’re a dog, cat or human. Ring the bell, watch us lick our chops.
The Pavlov dog experiment found that if you reinforced a behavior over and over through a food reward, you could get a dog to do certain things. Get the dog to salivate when you issued a command.
Humans are the same way. If we do something repeatedly and get a reward, we’ll go through the same action to make sure we get that bonus.
Our household, in contrast to a dog or human, has Pavlov’s cat. His name is Smudge. He has determined that multiple actions on his part will lead to positive consequences.
For example, like most felines, he likes to drink from running water. In a modern home, that means he wants you to turn on the tap, so he can lap from the faucet (I can only presume that these furry creatures had some native sense that tap water equates to a stream, river or brook, so they prefer that to lapping out of a dish, which would equate to a pond or lake).
Getting to the kitchen in the morning, I pop the dog food can to feed the hounds and Smudge leaps to the counter. What does he want? Turn the faucet on.
So I give him what he wants, and he starts tonguing the running water. Sometimes he toys with me and turns his back on this morning gift, but if I shut the water off, he gives me a look and paws the tap until I twist it back on.
It isn’t just at the kitchen sink where he pulls this routine. The bathtub works nicely, too.
Go into the bathroom to sit down and take care of business and Smudge hears you. He comes bounding, leaps up onto the bathtub and sticks his head under the faucet. He looks at you while you’re unrolling toilet paper and flushing, “What’s taking you so long?”
All it takes is a certain sound and he figures this out. Is it the creak of the toilet seat as you sit down? How does he know you’re doing number one or number two?
We keep grated cheese on hand for many different dishes. If I pull out the bag and he is anywhere within cat hearing vicinity, he bounds into the room. What incites Pavlov’s cat in this instance? It has to be the crinkling of the plastic as you pull open the bag to stick your hand in and grab some cheese.
He knows you’ll be holding some of those tasty morsels when he hears the plastic crinkle. I wonder if he salivates.
One of our other cats is more manipulative, but she is just as much a Pavlov cat as Smudge. She decides to mournfully manipulate my wife with meows each morning until she gets some cream. Her senses are attuned to the scraping of a small plastic receptacle sliding along the floor and the pouring of a small amount of cream into that container. Make any of those sounds and she comes running. God forbid you don’t, because she’ll let you know about that failure if you don’t service her needs first thing in the morning.
We’ve all got a little bit of Pavlov in us, whether we’re a dog, cat or human. Ring the bell, watch us lick our chops.
