Triggerology™: Understanding the Hidden Forces Behind Your Cat's Behavior

So every behavior begins somewhere.

Imagine someone walks into your office every single day and slams a heavy metal door.

Now, on the first day, you jump, and it's annoying.

On the second day, it's feeling irritating.

By the 20th day, your shoulders are tensing up before that person even reaches the hallway, 'cause you haven't decided to become anxious.

It's just something that your brain has learned, right? That sound predicts something unpleasant.

And cats learn exactly the same way.

Behavior is rarely about what's happening right now.

It's about what the cat predicts is about to happen, and that's a huge distinction.

For example, you reach toward your cat, and your cat bites you.

Now, you might be thinking, "My cat hates being petted." Well, maybe, but maybe not.

Maybe your cat has learned that hands usually mean something uncomfortable is gonna happen.

Maybe hands coming means they're gonna get picked up or have their nails trimmed or get shoved into a carrier or have medication shoved into them.

The hand itself has become the trigger.

The bite isn't the problem.

It's the result.

So what exactly is a trigger? A trigger is anything that causes an emotional response, not a behavior, an emotion.

And that's important because behavior follows emotion.

Fear comes first, then hiding.

Pain comes first, then aggression.

Excitement comes first, then zoomies.

Curiosity comes first and then investigation.

The behavior is simply the visible part that we see, but that emotion happened first.

I like to think about it this way.

Think of it, picture an iceberg, with the behavior being just that tiny piece above the water, and everything underneath the water, that's where triggerology lives.