The Current - Does your cat have behavioural issues? Here’s some help

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Then, have you ever thought of training your cat, just like you would your dog? Did you say no… or are you laughing in disbelief? A cat behavior specialist says you can, and explains what we are getting wrong about cats — especially about the ones with behavioural issues.

So our podcast House Party was supposed to end right after the election, but we're really not done with the party yet. Yeah, there's way too much to talk about still with the new government and everything. That's right. House Party is now going until the end of June and I am excited to keep nerding out about politics with you guys. I'm Catherine Cullen. I'm Daniel Thibault. And I'm Jason Markossoff. And you can find House Party in the feed for the house wherever you get your podcasts.

This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast. Juno, say hi. Good job. If you couldn't tell by the way she said hi, Juno is a cat. She has black fur, green eyes, age five and a half, weight seven pounds give or take. And Juno is currently living in a Toronto basement studio with her owner, Megan. She's a kind and gentle soul, an easy cat.

That's her twin brother Lenny. Lenny is a lot bigger than Juno. Also a black cat, but with a tiny patch of white on his chest. And Lenny can be a bit of a terror. An extremely difficult cat. Over the years Megan has learned how to handle his emotional outbursts. Hasn't been easy though. Megan Cardy is a producer here on The Current. Joins me now in our Toronto studio. Good morning. Good morning. Cats are not welcome in the studio but I don't know that I would want Lenny here anyway. Oh don't worry he wouldn't want to come

anyway. It's good to know. What makes Lenny such a challenging cat? Well, he has two very distinct personalities. So there's Lenny, which is like his resting state, and then there's Lennox. And Lennox is the scary one. Lennox comes out when he's triggered, and Lennox is vicious.

So it took me a long time to understand how to handle him. And it took a long time for people in my life to understand why I decided to keep him. But I figured him out and I love him. I just wish that we didn't normalize that a difficult cat should be returned to the shelter or euthanized. And this is why I'm talking to you today.

I wanna help others who might be struggling with cat behavioral problems. Okay, we'll get to the cat behavioral problems and the bigger picture. But tell me, I mean, Lenny has a good side. Yes, yes. And that's what makes it so tricky. If he was just Lennox, this might be a very different conversation. But I adore Lenny. He's such a good boy. He'll curl up in my chest and purr super loudly. When I'm lying on my back, he likes to come onto it and make biscuits, give me a massage. He fetches just like a dog and he loves car rides, which is rare for cats. He just sort of free roams in the car. And his favorite game is chewing cardboard. He loves to chew it up in little

pieces and then spit them out. So that's that's Lenny. Lauren Yeah. Pete What about Lennox? Lauren Okay, so Lennox, he's really just no longer himself at all. And it can come seemingly out of nowhere. In Little Spurts, where I'll be petting him and we'll be having a really nice moment and then all of a sudden, I can just feel his body change. It's when it turns on into a full episode that... Here, let me just play you some footage. Okay. This is him on the verge of a meltdown. Yikes. Is Lenny like hissing and swatting and?

Yeah, as you can hear, he's quite upset. Sounds scary if you happen to be in Lennox's company. Yes, yes. And I just want to point out that audio, that's actually him in his safe space. I have a big dog crate that he likes to go to feel comfortable and safe and not lash out. So I was recording that audio while he was in there with the door shut. If I were to let him out in a moment like this, it would get a lot worse.

And what do you mean by worse? That sounds pretty nasty already. I mean, for one, he screams, and before I knew how to handle this side, he would attack people, and he'd go after his sister Juno. So it wouldn't happen super often, but it was terrifying. And so you hinted at this,

but do moments like this ever make you worry that you would not be able to keep this cat in your house? Yes, yes, definitely. And it made me so sad. But I've just, I live alone and I've refused to give up on him. I have a little bit of a soft spot for troubled animals and I've kind of come to terms with the fact that I was meant to adopt him because someone else might have gotten rid of him by now, but I'm committed to understanding him and figuring out how to handle moments like this.

But a lot of cats aren't so lucky. So just some stats, more than twice as many cats are relinquished to shelters than dogs, that's according to Humane Canada. And once at a shelter, they stay on average about twice as long as dogs. Cats are also euthanized at double the rate of dogs. And black cats, which is Juno and Lenny, are the unluckiest of all. They're more likely to be euthanized than all other cats with lighter fur. But you chose to stick it out here. Yes, for his Lenny side. There was a time I would literally put on snow pants and a winter jacket to protect

myself in case he decided to charge at me. But now I have this big dog crate with blankets and toys. I told you about this. It's a safe space to cool off. And I have a system where I'll use a thick blanket to try to catch him if I sense a freakout coming on and then I get him in the cage with the door shut before it gets worse and just let him feel his feelings. And once he's cooled off, sometimes it takes minutes, sometimes hours, I'll unlatch the

cage door and let him back out. And it's just, it's like nothing ever happened. Do you have any idea as to what is going on here and why the cat would behave this way? I didn't at first. And it got progressively worse over time. So there was one night about a year ago where Juno and I were actually hiding in the bathroom from him because he was trying to attack.

And I was frantically Googling what is wrong with my cat. And that's when I learned about this term redirected aggression, which is essentially when a cat gets agitated by something, it can't directly address. So like an animal outside, it lashes at a nearby person or another cat. And since I live in a basement apartment with ground level windows in a city with a massive raccoon problem, this made a lot of sense. So that's an interesting theory. I thought so.

But I wanted an expert's opinion, so I reached out to Daniel Fillon. He's a cat behavior consultant in Montreal and he confirmed this. It's very good that you have already identified it as redirected aggression. This is what it is. Your cat sees an animal outside, whether it's a cat, whether it's a raccoon, whether it's a dog, he gets an emotion and he must discharge that emotion. It's too much for him. He wants to find this punching bag, something to get that emotion out. Google helps you with the diagnosis. This is good.

Yes. Yes. I was very proud of that. So, this is just the start of what I learned from Daniel though. He is the founder of a company called Educhateur. It's a pun that works better in French, Educator. Anyway, a bit about him. He fell in love with cats many years ago when he fell in love with a cat lover. He promised her they'd adopt a Maine coon. He learned from a veterinarian and animal behaviorist. And you have to picture this.

He's six foot four, his cat was 27 pounds and he'd walk it on a leash, turned some heads. And people started coming to him for cat advice. They just assumed he was an expert in this. Fast forward today, he has a team of 40 cat educators who work for him here in Canada and in Europe. They do more than 700 sessions a year with cat owners struggling with cats

who have behavioral problems just like Lenny. So he has seen some things before. What did he have to say to you about dealing with this sort of aggression? So here's how Daniel explains it. Once a cat makes an association between the trigger and the punching bag, it'll happen again every time after that. So this is very concerning because poor Juno, his sister, whenever he sees a raccoon has

become the punching bag. It's very heartbreaking. She's not very good at standing up for herself. So I always keep them separate now when I'm not home, just in case this happens and I'm not there to stop it. Fortunately, Daniel had some advice. The answer is pretty simple. You're not going to like it though.

The only way, for sure, is to block the sight of the raccoon outside. So make sure that the cat can't see the raccoon. Yes. Did you try to do this? I did, with black Bristol board. Not ideal, because it meant no sunlight, but also, he didn't just forget that the raccoon was on the other side of the cardboard, So he kind of obsessed about it and slowly would rip it off when I wasn't home. But now I have these sort of frosted window stickers.

They almost make the windows look like stained glass that I ordered off Instagram and light still gets in, but the cats can only see sort of blurry shadows of animals passing by. And so, did that work? It definitely helps. It's part of the solution, but not the whole solution. Daniel also suggested a few tricks to limit the appearance of animals outside. So, you can put rocks on the ground in front of the windows so they can't come as close. There's also a motion activated pet spray deterrent. It's called SCAT, like S-S-C-A-T, which emits a quick odorless spray to startle them away if they come too close. But Daniel had another really important tip. When you see him getting into that emotion,

if you are there, get the treat out. Get him the treat as soon as you're seeing this. out. Get him the treat as soon as you're seeing this. If he doesn't take the treat, throw him a toy like the the kikaru from uh it's some kind of a I would say a cushion with a tail just so that this becomes his punching bag. All right? Because if he's too in the emotion and you throw him some treat he's not gonna eat it. But if he takes the treats and you throw him some treat he's not going to eat it. But if he takes the treats and you repeat this over over over and over you're going to change the emotion because when he's going to see the shadow outside he's going to turn to you and says where are my treats? And then he's going to associate the shadow to something fun instead of something that brings the emotion out. Okay? The trick here is to change

the emotion. So this is the main thing I took away from the conversation with Daniel. It's that solutions exist. My cat is not broken. He's an animal who's developed a conditioned response to a stimulus and breaking the pattern will take time and effort, just like training and raising a dog. But we don't think about training cats the way that we think about training dogs. No, no, we expect cats to come sort of ready to go out of the box. And then when they have behavioral problems, we blame the cat. We adopt them with the expectation that they're more independent and require less work and so they're easier to neglect. And then they get all of this bad PR. As somebody who's wearing the cat sweater, you are offended by this bad PR.

I am very offended by this bad PR. So is Daniel. Uh, he had a lot to say about the different expectations we have for cats versus dogs. And this goes way back to the very beginning when we adopt. The adoption process for dogs are normally well-informed. People know that the breed is important, so they're going to make some research. Then they're going to go to the dog park with their dog, where they're going to get, exchange some information. They're going to get to an indicator,

kitten garden for dogs, and things like that. So they get a lot of information. The adoption process for a cat is the following. You open the pass your door and you just adopted a cat. Right? It happens. A cat wanders in, you feed it, friend for life. In my case, with Juno and Lenny, it was a virtual patio door. I essentially saw them on Instagram through a group called the Ottawa Stray Cat Rescue. I wanted them and then I picked them up a couple days later and voila. Is this the first time you've had cats? No, no, no. I grew up with them.

Always had cats, never had a Lennox though. I also had a dog when I was a teenager. I'm not a exclusively cat person, I love both. I had a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever named Charlie. He was awesome. But I got to see the difference, like how different dogs and cats are. And Daniel sums it up really well with some perspective on how different they are to live

with. Cats are a little bit more solitary in nature. They don't need us as much as dogs need us. And we don't see how they suffer from the misadaptation that we have in our house. So they're getting some behavioral problem. And we say, well, he's peeing outside of a litter box. It's his fault. No, it's our fault. We don't know the basic of cats, whether it

is peeing outside a litter box, whether it's aggressive behavior, meowing at night, scratching the furniture, and things like that. We solve that because once you have adapted the environment for the cat, it's just going to go along with it. So buy a bigger litter box, one more litter box and the number of cats, providing them with a good scratching post, not the little scratching post that the cat will not use. Just know what their needs are and you're not going to have any problem with them.

So Daniel is developing a free course for Canadian cat owners because he believes that if cat owners understand their cats better, fewer would be returned to shelters. And since cats have officially surpassed dogs as the most popular pet in Canada, this is very timely. And it's really reassuring to hear him because I just fell into the trap of thinking cats are the way they are and nothing can change them.

But it's not true. It was over 30 years ago that Clifford Olson first called me. Secret phone calls from Canada's most notorious serial killer. I knew I was killing the children but I couldn't stop myself. Now it's time to unearth the tapes because I believe there are still answers to be found. I'm Arlene Bynum from CBC's Uncovered, calls from a killer. Available now. So that's a lot of information, but how are you coping with living with a loose cannon, a cat that might attack you?

You're locking it up in the cage or wearing the snowsuit or what have you? Yeah. I mean, we've moved on from the snowsuit and things have gotten a lot better. A year ago, if we were having this conversation, I thought I had to get rid of him. But we've developed these coping mechanisms that work me and him. Now, one hard thing is it does make me nervous about having people over.

So I'll just share this one last piece of advice because I think it's a pretty universal training technique. Take the treats in your hand. Every time you know that someone is coming, they're gonna knock at your door, you give some treats in your hand every time you know that someone is coming they're gonna they're gonna knock at your door you give some treats to your cat you go insert a door you come back you give the treats to okay and if the cat reacts well to the person then has the person to show some treats given some treats and the more often you're gonna do this the more the cats gonna

generalize that every time someone's coming inside the house, it means I'm going to have some treats. So everybody is welcome into my house. That's basically what it is. It's very simple, but something that you often do with dogs when you want them to be trained. Who else did you talk to about trying to understand what is going on in the mind of a cat. Oh, I'm so glad you ask. So obviously this wouldn't be complete unless I found a place where I could also meet some cats. So I went to a place called the Vintage Cat Cafe in Toronto. So at the time of my visit, it was home to eight beautiful cats.

They've since adopted a few more. So you walk in, you see tables and chairs and the barista is making drinks behind the coffee bar. And then at the back, there's a sliding glass door that takes you into the cat's little private paradise. Jamal Oak is one of the owners of the Vintage Cat Cafe, and he introduced me to all the cats. Hello.

Hello, these are our cats. Hi. This is Luna. Hello. Zuzu welcomes you. Zuzu is a Persian cat. Oh, and who's this one coming? Yeah, we have Sky here, Sky.

Hi, Sky. She's a ragdoll, very fluffy. You're beautiful. She's a big character. They all look so happy. Look at that one in her little bed. That's so cute. So they have everything to be happy here.

The toys, the comfortable areas. And if you can't see, there is a private area at the back. So if they don't want to engage with the people, they have option to go back. Okay, so is that why some of them I'm not seeing right now? Yes. Yeah, they're not in the mood. Okay, this is, hi.

This is the main boy. Milo. Milo. Milo, oh big yawn. He's got his little banana pillow. Yeah, yeah, he is very, very friendly, very social. I can't get over this. It looks like a little human bed. It even has headboards and everything.

Oh, and this one's loafing. I always call it that when they sit on their feet like that, they look like a bread loaf. Some of them is very funny. I want to live here. If I was a cat... It's your kind of place. Oh, yes.

It truly felt like walking into what heaven would look like for me. Just like this big, bright, open space filled with cats. And I'm not the only one who feels like that. Jamal told me there are many people who visit the cats. Some specifically come to see a specific cat. He says many visitors find spending time with the cats very therapeutic. So Jamal and his wife are from Istanbul, which he told me is known as the City of Cats due to the large number of stray cats that roam the city, with the locals treating them as community pets. So it's very apropos.

He introduced me to the eight residents, and according to Jamal, eight cats equals eight distinct personalities. I find it very similar to humans. Some of them are very friendly, some of them is not that, so you get easily socialized with them. Some of them is you friendly, some of them is not that, some you get easily socialized with them. Some of them is you have like more space.

And compared with the other animals, maybe the dogs, it takes more time to, you know, create that trust because they have strong characters. And, but if you be patient and create that connection and it's a lifelong, so you cannot separate them because these are like our kids. Like our kids. Very sweet.

So in going to this spot with all the cats, I mean, how is this helping you understand cats and understand the cats in your home? Yeah, so I didn't know this about cat cafes, but they're actually really helping push cat research forward. So in recent years, the number of published studies exploring cat intelligence and sociability has grown exponentially. research forward. So in recent years, the number of published studies exploring

cat intelligence and sociability has grown exponentially. And a big reason for this are these accessible study subjects in cat cafes all around the world. See, cats are not easy to study. They're cats. They don't. They do what they want. And like Daniel was saying, they're creatures of their environment. They're often reluctant to leave home. They don't act like themselves in a strange lab. But since these cat cafes are their homes, the cats are used to interacting with strangers. They're super handy for providing a group to study in one familiar setting. And so this surge of new research has shown that cats can learn pretty much anything dogs can, and often more because

of their physical skills. During my visit, Jamal had some neat things to say about cats' trainability. You have to be patient. They are really smart animals, really extremely smart animals, and they're also very independent. They don't 100% obey, so they have their own thinking.

You have to convince them. But they're 100% trainable. For example, we have another cat at home and he's a toilet trainer. Yeah. Yeah, he doesn't use sand. Okay, tell me more. How did you do this?

So there is a kit, they sell it to use in the toilet and now he's trained. So whenever he wanna go to the toilet, you go to the washroom like us, do his stuff and come back. So we just flush it. I'm blown away. Yeah, it's doable.

Toilet training the cat. My mind was blown. I had no idea. Yeah, I didn't either. I think I don't mind changing the litter box. Like I'd rather change their litter box than share the toilet with my cat. But still, it's a thing.

Check out YouTube, lots of videos. Maybe not. Back to the cat cafe. There's a lot of you and a lot of Jamal. There's not a lot of the cats. Not one of them meowed, not once. Some people have expectancy. They come here, they want the cat, give them a shoulder.

Yeah. They say, oh, I got some of the cats are sleeping so yeah this is their place they are not you know here to put a show for you. This is not a circus. I love that so much this is not a circus it's their place. I did ask him about the lack of meowing specifically though because this was something I'd never seen before. They're very quiet. So most of them, they don't meow. If they're missing food, they try to, you know, like babies.

So they cry if they need something. So if they're happy, normally they don't create noise because everything is here. So... Hey, buddy. Let me just give them a treat maybe they will come. Sure. Oh, look at all these treats oh here comes Luna that's Luna right yeah yeah Luna hi do you want a treat oh my cats love that stuff. Yeah. I have that, this one I think about that. Oh and this one's waking up. They're

all coming. Oh they're all coming. One, two, three, four. Are you coming? Come, come, come. Well there you, there's some cat sounds for you. Courtesy of the treats. Courtesy of the treats. It's just like magic. So what are we, just last question, what are we getting wrong do you think about cats? Yeah, my big takeaway from all of this is you wouldn't adopt a dog and just expect it to behave the way you want it to without taking the time to bond with it and train it. And so we shouldn't do this with cats. People bring kittens home and they keep them alone inside. We think, oh, it's just a cat. It doesn't really need much., oh, it's just a cat. It doesn't really need much.

It's so much easier than a dog. And then they miss those important first weeks when socializing them is easiest. Whereas puppies, they're intentionally introduced to strangers and children. So cats are capable of so much more than we give them credit for, but just like a dog, we have to put in the time and effort.

We have to invest in them, work harder to understand them, and make sure their environment is working for them. That's a big one. And then if they have behavioral problems, we needn't wait months, or in my case, years, before we reach out to someone who might be able to help. I'll leave you with some final thoughts from our friend, the éduchateur, Daniel Fillon. The wish I have, I want to inform people on the needs of Kat. There are very few. You just need to understand what they need. And instead of saying it's inappropriate, instead

of punishing them, which we should never do, just try to understand why he's expressing as a need. What can I give him as an alternative that will suit us both? And you'll see you're gonna have a much better relationship with your cat. Lenny and I are proof of this. And hey, how many cats do you see riding in the passenger seat of a car? We turn heads when we go through the drive-through at McDonald's. But it comes down to conditioning and training. When they were kittens, they spent a lot of time in the car. We drove all the way to Vancouver and back.

So now the car is a part of their lives. So you get out what you put in. I've learned more about cats than I could have possibly imagined. Megan, thank you very much. That's what I could hope for. Thank you so much. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I, thank you very much. That's all I could hope for. Thank you so much. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway.

Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.