How to Make Your Cat Happier — in 3 Minutes | Nicky Trevorrow | TED

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 and 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 um some people seem to be 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 really 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 uh to happiness that it affects so many different types of animals in fact there's research to show that even fish like to play um 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 now when I tell people that I'm a cat behaviorist other

than the confused looks I get you can imagine and people saying a cat a cat what um then um they really are quite confused by it then 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 and um 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 great way to connect with your cat and it has lots of physical benefits as well because all 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 protections care weighing 6.7 kilg 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 mles today at her Target weight we of 4 kg 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 I often act as a bit of a translator between cats and their caregivers uh 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 it's 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 TW 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 how many s you know no self-respecting mouse would ever go up to a cat and go hi yeah here I am so yeah so we need to be thinking about how pra species actually move okay and then we need to be thinking about about the fact that cats have got different play Styles some cats prefer a game of rabbit a bit like this cat 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 uh where

you move the cat 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 mass 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's 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 like this by just having it disappear out of sight like under a newspaper or magazine like this and that makes it much more interesting it's really important that the cats actually allowed to catch and kill the toy it makes the cat feel good it's those happy hormones so very very important catch and kill the toy and that's where spoiler alert um 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 F not you just need to end the game always on a physical toy like this so they can actually catch and and kill the toy you may be concerned perhaps that um you know 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 okay now some people might think it's all very well and good but my cat doesn't really like to play they're too old they're too lazy that won't work for my cat um and some people really think that their cat doesn't play at all I had one client who said nope 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 dogwood but cats are not small dogs now as children we were taught not to play with their with their food and I'm here to ask all of you to not only play with your cat's food but more importantly get your cats to play with their food feed young and cats and in a way that's more interesting gets their minds working it's mentally stimulating in short for very little effort you can make 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 feeding enrichment also known as puzzle feeders 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 doesn't work because the cat's disinterest has left them disheartened but fear not because I have a few handy chips 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 okay we need to start off really simple with something like this okay you can find this online and then you want to start everybody off in an egg box it's brilliant because they're free and you just put in the biscuits where the cats would you know where the eggs would normally sit and you need to pour it out with your fingers and show the cats how to

use it and then for the next level up you can cover the biscuits with a bit of paper if you want to be it really difficult you can then shut the lid and it's so much fun watching these cats hunt for their food once they've mastered the egg box we can 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 and you just need to accelerate all the joints front and back and then put the biscuits

in where the egg where the toilet roll chbs are and then allow the cat to get them out so you can say very simple is they're free and a lot of fun so those my two tips keep it simple and show the cats how to do it many years ago I helped a caregiver and I was explaining how to introduce a puzzle ball to the cat so we talked through it and um she rung me up a while later quite exasperated and said Nikki 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 2 hours and the cat still doesn't understand she just follows me and eats all the biscuits yeah 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 where one cat does all the hard work and the other cat swoops on in and eats the biscuits I particularly like this puzzle board because it's got if you can just about see

it's got like four different sections on there so it's different ways for The Gap to think and use their brain and figure out how are they going to get the food the little bowls you can see 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 uh this one is this one of our cats from in care in cat protections care because we do use 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 cuz this cat has worked through from Easy through to Middle right through to sort of hard Master Level but you can see that is a lot of fun and also it really does slow down feeding it's particularly good um for if you've got cats that will just eat a lot of food and then reg toate 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 the basic principles of feed enrichment the world is your oyster and you're only limited by your imagination so you just need to take the feed enrichment and build up really slowly in complexity over time to your own individual cat's Pace I think that feed enrichment is just as fun for us as it is for cats 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