Your cat has a behavior you consider problematic. You call in an animal behaviorist, cat whisperer, or animal communicator. This professional works with your cat and your cat soon seems cured. Hurrah!
Well, that’s “cured” until your cat is back in its old environment. Before you know it, the problem has reappeared. You’re aghast. What is going on here? Didn’t the cat professional do its job properly?
When this happens, it may not be what the behaviorist did but what he/she didn’t do. What may be going on is what was a problem with HeadStart-like services for children in the early days. During the day, the child learned new information and how to apply it, behaviors, attitudes, and useful skills. Its life was being enriched. But when the child went home, it was likely to regress. In fact, it could “lose” much of what it had gained during the day. What was happening?
What was going on was that HeadStart-type organizations needed to take a two-pronged approach. One prong is working with the child to stretch its knowlege, abilities, intelligence, and create confidence. The other prong is working with the parents so the home environment can and does positively support their child’s daily enrichment gains.
Parents had to understand what was needed, be willing to work with HeadStart-type services, and be given ways to create this new encouraging, reinforcing, positive home environment so the change and growth could continue.
It’s the same with having someone address your cat’s behavior problems. You have to understand and accept what environmental factors, your behaviors, attitudes, and expectations may have contributed to your cat’s behavior. You likewise need to be willing to be sensitive to your cat and its needs. You need to be willing to change yourself to appropriately address the problem behavior—to keep alive trust and respect in your relationship with your cat.
Unless your animal behaviorist, cat whisperer, or animal communicator addresses both prongs of the problem, the problem may recur. The professional needs to make sure you understand the dynamics of the cat’s behavior. He/she needs also to make sure you commit to discovering and changing whatever factors may be making the behavior possible.
If your animal behavior professional does not address this with you, you need to make sure you ask what you may have been doing to make the problem possible and what you need to do to keep it from recurring. The solution to your cat’s behavior problem requires change by both you and your cat.