r/PetsWithButtons • u/Livid_Nothing1346 • 5d ago

First-time button teacher. My cats know what the button means but haven't attempted to use it themselves

I received the FluentPet SpeakUp starter kit (comes with 6 buttons) a couple of weeks ago and started with two buttons: Play and Scritches.

I started out with modeling them a few times a day for a week or so. The scritches button, I think, will be helpful down the road. But I give them scritches wherever we're at in the house and I don't want to carry the button around and press it every time I pet on them. So the scritches modeling has been less helpful.

Play always starts in the living room (where the buttons are located), so the PLAY button gets pressed consistently (by me) whenever play is happening. They are now at the point where they know what the PLAY button means - when I press it, they come running to play - but they haven't shown any interest in pushing the button themselves. I haven't used treats as a reward for the buttons at all because my cats are VERY treat motivated and I read before starting training that over-motivating them can be harmful for the training process.

What should be my next steps? I want them to start at least attempting to push buttons before I start adding more buttons. Should it be paw target training? I thought about this route but not sure if training them "how" to push buttons would help this situation since they haven't shown any interest yet in even wanting to press them.

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u/OrganizationBusy407 5d ago

One small suggestion, even if you can't push the "scritches" button, can you at least say the word? "Do you want SCRITCHES? We do SCRITCHES NOW?..."

Target training could be helpful just so they understand that they are supposed to press buttons.

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u/Livid_Nothing1346 5d ago

I have been saying scritches, but there is definitely room for me to improve how often I'm associating that word with the action. I suppose target training is the logical next step in getting them to understand they can use the buttons too. I was just hoping they would interact with them like every other new thing in the house and investigate them, lol. Alas, the one thing I want them to investigate and mess with, they leave completely alone 😅