Chapter 7

I have had a similar experience with my cats as Pavlov did with the dog, of course at the time I did not know that is was called classical condition. I have had teach my cats what the word “eat” means.  The uncontrolled stimulus was the cat food and the conditioned response was my cats running into the kitchen meowing at me every time they heard me poring food. I need to somehow change their conditioned response to one that was not annoying to me. Then I used a controlled stimulus and started to say eat whenever I shook the box. Then they learned whenever I said “eat” to run down stairs and sit by the bowl and wait for me to walk down and feed them. As a result they no longer harassed me whenever I would shake a box. For example, before I could be pouring cereal into a bowl and they would practically attack me and jump onto the table.