This Online Group Is Dedicated To Cats With Jobs, And Here Are 38 Of Them

To get an animal to "work" with you often means training them. And while most of us associate the words "animal training" with dogs, Layla Morgan Wilde, a cat expert and founder of the award-winning blog Cat Wisdom 101, thinks that felines are also perfectly capable of "working" with their humans.

"Cats are very trainable but methodology differs from dogs," Layla told Bored Panda. "It requires patience and short daily training sessions. [Most cat owners can train them to] respond to basic commands like come, sit, stay. Some cats are more trainable than others and it's easier with a younger cat."

Layla highlighted that some cats are also being harness-trained to walk on a leash for outdoor adventures. You can learn more about them by exploring the #adventurecats hashtag on Twitter.

"Certainly young kittens are highly energetic, but you can still encourage any cat to have a spring in their step by giving them a few minutes of interactive play several times a day," the behaviour team at Cats Protection, the UK's leading feline welfare charity, told Bored Panda. "Try using a fishing rod toy with some feathers and moving like speedy mouse dashing behind the furniture or up in the air like an erratic moth to see what sparks your cat's interest. The most important thing is to make sure your cat is able to catch and 'kill' the toy. If they are teased with it, then they can get frustrated or bored."

This means that 'how lazy your cat is' may well depend on your effort to amuse it! For more ideas on how to spend quality time with your feline, check out this YouTube video by Cats Protection.

"Despite popular belief, cats can actually be trained using positive reinforcement methods like clicker training (more common in dogs but can be applied to lots of different types of animals)," the experts at Cats Protection highlighted. "The main difference is that you have to find a small treat that the cat really wants and training sessions are much shorter – often only a couple of minutes max."

"Like with any training, it's a form of two-way communication and you need to have excellent timing to reward the right behaviour. Cats can easily be taught to use a cat flap, get used to the cat carrier as well as cute stuff like a sit or high five (our CP behaviourists’ cats can do all of these!). For more information on clicking training – check out ‘Clicker training for cats’ by Karen Pryor. Why not teach your cat how to use feeding enrichment? Puzzle feeders are a much more interesting way to feed a cat compared to an ordinary bowl and encourages them to ‘hunt’ for their food and use their clever brains. Try something simple to start with like a cardboard egg box and place some dry biscuits where the food would normally sit, and then show your cat how to use it by 'pawing' out a few biscuits with your fingers. Do this for a couple of minutes and then stand back and let your cat have a go!

For more info, fire up their other video, called How to make your cat's feeding time exciting.

Celia Haddon, the founder of CatExpert.co.uk and author of several best-selling books about cats, said that we can't compare felines to herbivores (animals that eat only plants) when we're assessing their activity levels. "Herbivores have to keep eating for long hours in order to get enough nourishment. If you watch horses grazing, they will graze for hours," Haddon explained to Bored Panda. "Cats are carnivores. They hunt other living creatures (mice, rabbits, etc.) and they have to put out a lot of energy in order to catch their prey. When they have caught enough prey and had enough to eat, they stop and preserve their energy. Usually, they sleep. Our cats follow this pattern, only they don't even have to catch their own food. So they do a lot of sleeping. It's not laziness, it's just the carnivore lifestyle."

The cat expert said if you want to give your kitty more stuff to do, you can take away its food bowl. "Hide food around the house," Haddon proposed. "Make or buy food dispensers so that your cat has to work for its food."

Haddon agreed that you can train your cat but she also added that (as with all animals) you can only train them to behave in a natural way. "For example, you couldn’t train a cat to attack criminals, as it is not natural for a cat to attack strange human beings. However, it is easy to train a cat to do little tricks like sitting on command, rolling on its back, or sitting up and waving its paws. I have trained some of my cats to jump a little jump, to sit on command, to sit up on hind legs and give high fives, and to sit on a mat."

To check out how Haddon works with cats, you head over to her YouTube channel.

Like we pointed out in our earlier piece on working cats, there have been numerous kitties who have held actual jobs! For example, when Empirical Brewery in Chicago noticed that their grain was being eaten by rodents and insects, they decided to get four cats to patrol the 8,000 square foot brewery and look for anything they can catch.

Another notable pest control expert is Felix the Railway Cat. He has been working at Huddersfield Railway Station in the UK for years and even has his own name tag and a neon vest to let everyone know he's not joking around. Although when he's on his break, Felix loves to chat with travelers.

Some experts say that keeping a cat is actually a really cost-effective and humane form of pest control. Firstly, it eliminates the need for harsh chemicals and poisons, which is better for the environment. And as for the humanity of it, the introduction of cats to a vermin-ridden area alone can eliminate pests without any killing — the feline scent and droppings alone are enough to drive out rodents, because rats won’t even reproduce near these predators.

So it sounds like cats still have a place in the workforce!