You’re probably familiar with dog agility competitions at dog shows like Westminster (USA) or Crufts (UK), but did you know that cats compete in agility too?
The origins of cat agility seem to date back to 2003, with the first Cat Fancier’s Association (CFA) agility competition held in 2005 featuring both pedigreed cats and household pets. Since then, cat agility has continued to grow in popularity around the world as people flock to see cat’s show-off their skills in the ring.
How Cat Agility Works
Like dog agility; cat agility is designed to demonstrate a cats speed, coordination, physical movement and condition, intelligence and training whilst navigating a challenging course.
At cat show agility competitions, cats enter the ring and are given time to familiarise themselves with their surroundings before they begin the circuit.
Once the cat is ready, the trainer leads them through the obstacle course using a laser or teaser toy (stick with feather on the end).
Similar to dog agility the obstacle course includes hurdles, hoops, tunnels, stairs, A-frames and weave poles.
Trainers are not allowed to touch the cat but can give voice commands and use clickers and the teaser toy to encourage their cat around the course, which is timed by a ringmaster with a stopwatch.
Timing starts when the cat touches their first obstacle and ends when they exit the last obstacle in the course. In CFA competitions, cats are given a maximum time of 4 minutes 30 seconds to complete the course and can repeat it three times to achieve their best score.
Final score calculations vary between cat organisations but are usually based on the number of obstacles completed successfully (or the number of faults) and how quickly they complete the course.
Check out this athletic Bengal running a cat agility course:
Benefits of Cat Agility
- Cat agility encourages and reinforces the human-animal bond; it’s a great way to spend quality time with your cat.
- There are obvious health benefits of running a challenging obstacle course – so cat agility also helps to keep you and your cat fit, active and healthy. If your cat is overweight or inactive, cat agility may be a great way to encourage him off the couch.
- Lastly, cat agility creates a positive public impression of cats as highly intelligent and trainable companion animals (just like dogs!)
DIY Cat Agility
Do you have a long unobstructed hallway, or a large lounge room with spare space? You don’t have to enter official cat competitions to run agility with your cat, why not set up your own cat agility course in the comfort of your own home.
We’ve just started cat agility in our home as way to get our indoor kitties moving more, and so far they are enjoying navigating the course down the hallway.
You can buy or make hoops and jumps using supplies from your local building supplies store, but we found the easiest way to begin was by using what we already had in the house – a cat tunnel, a few rolled up towels to create low-level jumps, and a fishing pole toy wand with some new feathers attached to the end.
Using the teaser toy, we’ve been working on getting the cats to follow a very simple course that involves running through the tunnel and over the jumps. The key to success is repetition (until they get bored) and reward (we use praise and attention rather than food treats). You Tube has some great cat agility training videos to get you started.
Check out this adorable Tonkinese kitten learning agility:
Have you tried cat agility with your cat, either in your own home or the show ring? Please share your experiences below.
Image: Alexander via Flickr
I run through my tunnel does that count´s as agillity ?? 🙂
Wowee! Loved seeing that Tonk kitten and the Bengal! We have a great hallway, but we don’t know if we would actually like doing agility. You can see our Easter Egg Roll fail video in today’s post, and that’s what would probably happen if Mommy tried this with us, MOL!
Didn’t know cats could enjoy Agility too. Very interesting! Good luck with your A to Z Challenge. I wrote about our first try at backyard Agility for the letter ‘A’ too.
That’s so awesome! I’ve got to do this with my gang! Sampson and Caster would be good at it I think.
I saw cat agility in action at a Purina event a few years ago. It was sooo cool! I could kick myself because Cody does things naturally that would make him great at agility. Should have worked with him when he was younger. He naturally stands on his hind legs to take treats from me lol
I had never seen a cat do agility, that was really neat. I can’t imagine our cats would even make the attempt, I can just see the looks I would get for interrupting their naps!
WOW! That was awesome. That Bengal sure did a great job running that course. Why not, indeed? 🙂
What an eye-opener! I never imagined that cats could run agility courses. A very well-written and informative post. I wish I could get my dog to perform agility so well!
Cat agility is so much fun! I love to watch the kitties run the courses. Some of them are unbelievably good at it! I haven’t tried it with my kitties, but who knows, maybe some day I will. 🙂
Your post came at just the right time. A couple of us need to lose some weight, and our mom never thought of trying this at home; though, she has seen kitties doing this in videos like you shared here. It looks like we may be jumping through hoops sometime soon.
I wondered how you would entice a cat to do agility…now it makes sense!
This looks like so much fun for a cat to do, especially when they’re younger and have all that extra energy. Wish I had known about cat agility earlier. It’s a great idea.
We run our own freestyle agility in the house ! Purrs
I think feline agility is such a cool idea. Definitely something I would love to try one day, because I love watching dogs run agility courses!
I have one cat that is ALL about the agility, and another that thinks agility means getting to the food bowl in one piece. Sigh.
what fun….though if the mom tried this with us we might consider sending out for a replacement 🙂
I don’t have that kind of patience but cats are the love of my life!
I think cat agility is a great way to engage cats and get them moving!
We don’t do agility courses but we do leap up fences and walk along them to show we can balance well and also do deep breathing exercises so we can smell the lovely fresh air.
Cat agility sounds like fun! I have heard of these courses, but I’ve never seen a cat run one, so thank you for including the video in this post.
The way we tear around the house, we could have our own agililty course!
My cats seem to enjoy their own agility training. They are always up to strange agility like things around our house!
This is one thing my human hasn’t tried with me – she does not think I have the personality for it! She says I am lazy and not motivated in that way… and I am afraid she is right!