Cats CAN learn tricks! My husband and I have two kitties, a boy named Salem and a girl named Camille. They know about 10 words so far, and I'm always working on more! We talk to them all the time, and I think that's part of the reason they pick up on words so well. One word that they picked up just from hearing us use it in everyday speech is "bird". We have a bird feeder on the balcony, and they've come to associate the word "bird" with the birds that arrive at the feeder; every time I say "bird!", they run right over to the sliding glass doors to look at the little birds.
Three of the tricks they do are "sit", "down", and "footsie" (the latter is similar to a dog doing "paw"). I trained them to do one of these commands at a time - first we did sit, as that was pretty easy, then a week or two later we learned 'down', then later, 'footsie'.
To teach them sit, I used food (they used to like these little treats that were good for their teeth, so I called them "tartar treats", another word the cats know, even though they don't like tartar treats anymore!). I'd hold up a piece of tartar treat and say "sit", and then gently push them into a sitting position, or wait until they naturally sat (you can move the food over their head and usually they'll sit right down to follow the food with their eyes).
Down was a little more interesting - their natural instinct to get food was to jump up or just bully their way towards it... so I had to gently put them on their sides and say "down" as they went over on their sides. Because of this, now when they do "down", they flop over on their sides instead of neatly lying down on their tummies!!! It's really very cute. They're not supposed to beg, but it's kind of silly when they do because their way of begging is to flop over on their sides! We don't give in, but they still try :)
Footsie drove my husband nuts. That was the most difficult for them to learn - it took several evenings, maybe 45 mins to an hour at a time, of me repeating "footsie" and touching their paws lightly so that they picked them up and put one in the air! They start from a sitting position, and pick up a front paw. The less natural something is, the longer it will take for them to learn... and holding up a paw to get a tartar treat definitely wasn't a natural instinct for them! The cutest thing about their learning footsie was when my parents visited with their little dog (a lhasa poo named Moxie!). Moxie watched while Salem and Camille did 'footsie', and she saw that they were rewarded with a tartar treat - so the next time I said footsie, all three pets lined up and held up their paws!! Moxie is quite the quick learner :) I swear my parents are training her for the circus, that dog does all sorts of tricks and things on visual commands!
So... now we are learning "speak". So far I'm trying it with a brush instead of tartar treats. They both just adore getting brushed, so I hold the brush up and say "speak", and as soon as someone does, they get brushed for a few moments. Then I take it away and hold it up so they can see it and try again!
If you're training your cats and having some trouble getting them to understand what they need to do, I have a slightly bizarre tip for you - enlist the help of another human as an example! :) My husband just loves this... ha. He was asked to help train them on footsie by holding up his 'paw' for food... and tonight he did "speak" to demonstrate for the cats! After seeing how much Moxie learned from just observing S & C, I'm convinced that's a useful method of teaching. We'll see how long "speak" takes! Tonight they got distracted when I accidentally moved a toy with my foot :)
