Make Your Cat Happier In 3 Minutes: Nicky Trevorrow (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of cat behaviourist Nicky Trevorrow’s talk titled “Make Your Cat Happier In 3 Minutes” at TEDxCardiff 2024 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Power of Play

When I was asked to do this TED Talk, I sat down with my cat, as you do, and I thought, “What’s going to make the biggest difference to as many cats as possible?” What could it be? I looked at my cat for inspiration and thought, “Yes! That’s it! Yes Kato!” That’s his name.

Let’s tell everybody about the power of play. If some people seem to be the cat, people like me. Hands up! Yes. Welcome. Other people seem to be dog people. Hands up! You’re also welcome. It doesn’t matter if you’re not really a cat person, if cats aren’t your thing. That’s fine. Just take the word cat in this talk and replace it with dog, or horse, goat, child, whatever your species of choice is.

And that’s because play is so fundamental to happiness that it affects so many different types of animals. In fact, there’s research to show that even fish like to play. They actually jump into streams of bubbles and ride them to the top and jump out and do it again. In case you were wondering.

Reactions to Being a Cat Behaviorist

Now, when I tell people that I’m a cat behaviorist, other than the confused looks I get, as you can imagine, and people saying “a cat, a cat. What?” They really are quite confused by it. If they don’t have a cat themselves, then they’ll soon tell me that. “Oh, yes, my mother’s neighbor’s friend’s sister has a cat.”

They’ll often ask me questions about that cat’s behavior. It’s a bit like those of you that are nurses, and you get everybody’s medical questions. Now, invariably, I’m often recommending interactive play and feeding enrichment, and that’s because it has such a positive difference. Such a big impact on their happiness.

Like you can see here from my cat Kato. Play is not only fun. It gets the gray matter working. It’s a great way to connect with your cat. And it has lots of physical benefits as well.

Play Helps with Weight Loss

That extra exercise is an excellent tool for helping overweight cats shed those extra pounds! This is the very gorgeous Moodles and she came into Cats Protection’s care weighing 6.7kg. Now her very fantastic owner not only continued the diet that was already in place, but she also implemented a program of interactive play and feed enrichment. It certainly made dieting a lot more fun.

And this is Moodles today at her target weight of four kilograms, and she’s a much happier and healthier cat for it. Play is important for every cat, young or old, all around the world. Now I know what you might be thinking. I know how to play with my cat.

That’s fine. But if your cat were to give you a review, what’s it going to say? Now it might not say “could try harder”, but it might say “could try smarter”. So let’s have a look at how to play “the cat way”.

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Translating for Cats

I often act as a bit of a translator between cats and their caregivers. This cat, for example, is saying, “What is this? This? This mouse is dead.” Bring it to me alive.

And that’s where the interactive play comes. Because if you just put it there in front of the cat, it’s not interesting. You need to make it move. You need to bring it to life. And so you bring the mouse to the cat and the cat goes, “No, no, no, no, not like that.” Make it run away from me. Because let’s face it. No self-respecting mouse would ever go up to a cat and go, “Hello! Here I am!”

So we need to be thinking about how prey species actually move. And we need to be thinking about the fact that cats have got different play styles. Some cats prefer a game of rabbit. Bit like this cat.

Different Play Styles

And that’s where they grab the toy with their front claws and they bunny kick with the back legs. Other cats prefer a game where you move the toy across the floor, and maybe it makes like a little, a little quiver over here and a mad dash across the floor, just like a mouse might. And then others prefer the toy to be moved up in the air like this.

So this is a game like an erratic moth. Now, cats haven’t evolved to show an awful lot in their faces. If you find them hard to read, that’s okay, they’ve evolved that way.

But if you look at this cat, you can see that the claws are out, the whiskers have come forwards and the mouth is open, and they’re so engaged and focused on that toy. This is a cat showing the face of joy. You can also make it a lot more fun by just having it disappear out of sight.

Under a newspaper or magazine. Like this. And that makes it much more interesting. It’s really important that the cat’s allowed to catch and kill the toy, because this is what releases endorphins. It makes the cat feel good.

The Problem with Laser Pointers

It’s those happy hormones. So very, very important. Catch and kill the toy. And that’s where…

-Spoiler alert. The laser pens can be a bit of a problem, because it can cause frustration where the cat can’t ever catch the red dot. So if you do have a laser toy at home, fear not.

You just need to end the game always on a physical toy like this so they can actually catch and kill the toy. You may be concerned perhaps that, maybe all of this play is just training our cats to become more proficient hunters. But you’ll be very pleased and relieved to hear that the latest research shows that if you just play with your cats for a few minutes several times a day, it actually reduces hunting behavior.

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Okay, now some people might think.

That’s all very well and good, but my cat doesn’t really like to play. They’re too old. They’re too lazy.

Even Lazy Cats Play

That won’t work for my cat. Some people really think that their cat doesn’t play at all. I had one client who said, “No, my cat doesn’t play.” And yet during the conversation, I found out that her cat does play, but only for five minutes. This is play. It’s just that the owner expected her cat to play for half an hour or more, much like a dog would.

But cats are not small dogs. Now, as children, we were taught not to play with our food. And I’m here to ask all of you to not only play with your cat’s food, but more importantly, get your cat to play with their food.

Feeding cats in a way that’s more interesting, gets their minds working. It’s mentally stimulating. In short, for very little effort, you can actually change your cat’s happiness and you can change their life in just three minutes because that’s how long it takes to show a cat feed enrichment, also known as puzzle feeders.

Feeding Enrichment

And it simply just means feeding a cat in a way that’s much more interesting than just in a bowl. Now, some people may have dabbled in feed enrichment, probably accidentally, when they’ve gone down the pet shop and picked up a puzzle ball like this and they’ve given it to their cat. And then they’ve got frustrated and thought “it doesn’t work.”

Because the cat’s disinterest has left them disheartened. But fear not, because I have a few handy tips up my sleeve. And that is to keep it simple. Now, as much as I love, I do love the puzzle balls. They are brilliant, but these are medium level toys. We need to start off really simple with something like this.

Okay, you can find this online and you want to start off with an egg box. It’s brilliant because they’re free and you just put in the biscuits where the eggs would normally sit. You need to pour it out with your fingers and show the cats how to use it.

Simple and Free Puzzle Feeders

Then for the next level up, you can cover the biscuits with a bit of paper. To make it really difficult you can shut the lid. It’s so much fun watching these cats hunt for their food.

Once they’ve mastered the egg box, you move on to the toilet roll pyramid. This one is fantastic for children. A great one I’d like to see done in schools particularly because there’s no sharp scissors involved.

You just need to sellotape all the joins front and back, then put the biscuits in where the toilet roll tubes are, and then allow the cat to get them out. Very simple ideas, they’re free and a lot of fun. So those are my two tips: Keep it simple and show the cats how to do it.

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Many years ago, I helped a caregiver. I was explaining how to introduce a puzzle ball to the cat. We talked through it and she rung me up a while later, quite exasperated, and said “Nicky, I’ve done what you said. I got down on my hands and knees,” “and I’ve been batting around this puzzle ball now for two hours,” “and the cat still doesn’t understand.”

Clever Cats

“She just follows me and eats all the biscuits.” Yes, that cat. Knows what she’s doing. And that cat knows how to use a puzzle ball.

But she’s getting the caregiver to do all the hard work. And you get pairs of cats like this as well. One cat does all the hard work and the other cat swoops in and eats the biscuits.

I particularly like this puzzle board it’s got about four different sections. So it’s different ways for the cat to think and use their brain and figure out how they’re going to get the food. The little bowls near the beginning, near the cat, are also really good for wet food.

So it’s quite a good one for both wet and dry food. This one is one of our cats in Cats Protection’s care because we do use the feed enrichment quite a lot. Now this is one of those ‘do not try this at home’ unless your cat has been doing a lot of enrichment and knows exactly what they’re doing, because this cat has worked through from easy through to middle right through to sort of hard master level.

Slowing Down Fast Eaters

But you can see that it’s a lot of fun. And also it really does slow down feeding. It’s particularly good, if you’ve got cats that will just eat a lot of food and then regurgitate it up. Where’s the biscuit? It’s on her back. They do make cute videos as well!

So you can see that really, we’re not teaching cats how to play. They’re teaching us! We just have to listen to them. And we need to learn their preferences.

Because once you get the basic principles of feed enrichment, the world is your oyster and you’re only limited by your imagination. You just need to take the feed enrichment and build up really slowly in complexity over time to your individual cat’s pace. I think that feed enrichment is just as fun for us as it is for the cats.

Conclusion

So go ahead. Give it a go. It’s fun, it’s easy, and it takes very little effort. You’ve got three minutes, right? It may not change the world, but it will change the world for your cat. Thank you very much.