Puu was untouchable. He was also nearly invisible during the day, given how much time he spent in a hiding box at the shelter. He’d been surrendered by his carer, who was moving overseas, after two years living indoors as a kind of house feral. Puu had no history of being affectionate with humans. In fact, he’d been born to a colony of cats in a warehouse, where he tended to keep his distance, except during mealtimes.
Puu was not adoptable, at least not in the traditional sense: He had spent two years hiding, fleeing from contact, and was hissing, growling, and lunging at shelter staff and volunteers, even when they only wanted to feed him. Typically, a cat like Puu, who had been thriving in a safe colony setting, would not have been considered a candidate for the Friends for Life Animal Shelter’s adoption program. Instead, the shelter’s Fix Houston department, which oversaw the care of local cat colonies, would normally have facilitated a return to his original warehouse home. However, Puu’s case was complicated by the fact that he had been living indoors for two years. Returning him to the warehouse would likely have required a re-acclimatization period, similar to that required when outdoor, free-roaming cats cared for by the community, known as community cats, are relocated (Best Friends Animal Society, 2022).
This is a situation familiar to many cats in modern shelters. Community cats and house cats whose sociality to humans is not obvious after some days in shelter hold are at great risk of euthanasia (Schaffner, 2017). Where possible, return to field (RTF) can be a humane option for cats with a history of thriving unowned and at large, but for cats like Puu who have either lived a significant portion of their lives indoors or have health concerns that prevent them from doing well as community cats, there are few options for live release (Spehar & Wolf, 2020).
All other factors being equal, people prefer friendly cats. Adopters’ preference for cats who are approachable, affectionate, and interactive is well-documented. Surveys indicate that the main behavioral characteristic that attracts adopters to a cat is friendliness and the ability of the adopter to interact with them (Kry & Casey, 2007; Sinn, 2016). Increased adopter interest can also result in reduced time spent in shelter. Low latency of approach to shelter visitors is associated with shorter time to adoption (Dybdall & Strasser, 2024), and cats who approach and interact have one-third the length of stay of cats who flee and/or hide (Brown & Stephan, 2021).
To take advantage of the relationship between prosocial behavior and increased adoption rates in shelter cats, researchers recommend encouraging interactive behaviors through training and enrichment (Bollen, 2015; Fantuzzi, Miller, & Weiss, 2010; Gourkow & Fraser, 2006). Cats like Puu, who are initially avoidant of human contact, and even less fearful but non-interactive cats, can benefit from being trained to approach potential adopters in an affiliative manner. In this article, we propose a novel, resource-friendly protocol for using ritualized introduction training to help cats generalize prosocial behaviors toward unfamiliar people in a shelter environment.

The Fraidy Cat Program

Ritualized introduction training (affectionately known as “stranger ritual” training) is part of Friends for Life Animal Shelter’s Fraidy Cat program, a comprehensive initiative meant to field, rehabilitate, adopt out, and provide post-adoption support to extremely fearful cats who are not candidates for RTF. Fraidy Cat was launched by the Friends for Life Animal Behavior and Training Department in 2018, when humane organizations in Greater Houston experienced a dramatic increase in demand to place cats too fearful to be considered for adoption. For cats to be considered candidates for the program, they must:

• Not qualify for the shelter’s RTF program for cats who are thriving outdoors and can be returned safely to their original living space.
• Hide, flee, hiss, growl, or lunge during daily observation periods for at least 72 hours post intake.
• Receive a comprehensive veterinary assessment to rule out complications that could be related to fearful behavior.

Fraidy Cat subjects do not need to have any history of prosocial behavior toward humans, nor must they consume food rewards in the presence of handlers prior to training. During Fraidy Cat training, subjects not initially taking treats offered when handlers are present undergo a training phase incorporating a negative reinforcement contingency in the following manner:

• After having observed a cat’s responses to environmental stimuli, trainers can expect the cat to perform a specific behavior as people enter the room, called the “entry target behavior.” Some typical entry target behaviors include the following: looking toward a hiding box, shifting weight, and licking lips.
• Using the camera in the cat’s condo to observe closely, the trainer enters the room slowly and quietly. When the cat emits the entry target behavior, the trainer retreats immediately.
• The trainer repeats the above step, each time slowly approaching the cat condo until the cat engages in the entry target behavior. Generally, the trainer is able to approach more and more closely with subsequent trials before the cat performs the entry target behavior.
• Once the experimenter can approach to within a distance of 18 inches, they will begin to place a treat inside the condo. If the cat takes fewer than two seconds to eat the treat, then the next treat is placed, then another treat after a further two seconds, until either four treats have been placed or the entry target behavior is performed and the trainer retreats.

The negative reinforcement phase is complete when the following criteria have been met:

• The trainer can approach the cat condo four trials in a row within 18 inches and the cat does not flee, hide, hiss, growl, lunge, or emit the entry target Behavior.
• The cat consumes four treats in a row within two seconds of their being offered.

Additional details about the program can be found in the IAABC Foundation Journal’s 2020 article Another Way Out: Friends for Life’s Fraidy Cat Program (Taylor & Zeman, 2020). Since the publication of this article, additional refinements to the program have been made, including updates to enrollment assessments, housing, enrichment, and behavior modification, and a transitional psychopharmaceutical medication protocol. As of 2023, the following was true of Fraidy Cat since the inception of the program:

• 276 cats had been enrolled.
• 267 had graduated (meaning that they were reliably soliciting affection from at least two human handlers), four were in-process, two were placed in medical sanctuary, and 10 (graduates and in-process cats) had died while in shelter care.
• It took an average of 53 days from enrollment to graduation.
• The average length of stay for program cats was 174 days.
• The return from adoption rate of program cats was 1.4%.

STRANGER RITUALS

The bulk of behavior modification time spent with Fraidy Cat program animals is concerned with building a repertoire of prosocial behaviors that the cat learns to demonstrate with their main handler. When a cat is reliably soliciting affection from two familiar carers at the shelter, they are said to have “graduated” from the program. After graduation, the goal is to condition these cats to approach and solicit affection from any person who visits them at the shelter, whether familiar or novel.
What comes to mind when envisioning a ritualized introduction protocol for cats? Are behavior team members training cats to shake paws and say “How do you do?” when they meet people? The concept of stranger rituals for fearful animals is not far from what we consider human ritualized introductions: We shake hands, we bow, we kiss. We say, “Nice to meet you!” According to anthropologist Alessandro Duranti, human greeting rituals share some common characteristics: They happen right at the beginning of an interaction, they consist of brief alternating contributions from each party, they are extremely predictable in form and content, and they identify participating parties as members of a social group (Duranti, 1997).
These are also characteristics of the stranger ritual training we use at the shelter:

1. They take place at the beginning of an interaction. Until the cats are reliably approaching and soliciting affection from visitors at the shelter without the help of a behavior team member, we are careful to ensure that cats are greeted in this formulaic way, with supervision when necessary, at each interaction.
2. “Stranger” and cat take turns contributing. Each behavioral “utterance” is brief and gives the “conversation” partner an opportunity to respond in turn. This allows the cat to “opt out” of an introduction by choosing to offer a behavior that is not part of the ritual. This perception of control over exposure to a potential stressor (the unfamiliar person) can reduce the stress associated with the encounter (Maier & Seligman, 2016). Here is an example ritual:
   1. Human enters the cat’s living space.
   2. Cat makes eye contact.
   3. Human offers a treat.
   4. Cat makes eye contact.
   5. Human offers their index finger.
   6. Cat targets finger.
   7. Human offers a treat.
   8. Cat makes eye contact.
   9. Human offers loosely cupped hand.
   10. Cat bunts against hand.
   11. Human scratches cat under chin briefly.
3. Extremely predictable in form and content. Stranger rituals are brief, incorporating the same simple behaviors in the same order and reliably result in the cat soliciting affection.
4. Identify participants as members of a social group. This may be a bit of a stretch, but a review of factors that define friendship in animals and humans includes the following: increased spatial proximity, affiliative body contact, cooperation, and reduced rate of agonistic interaction (Massen, Sterck & de Vos, 2010). We would argue that, by training a stranger ritual and coaching handlers to interact with cats within the boundaries of the ritual, we are encouraging cooperation, approach, affection, and mutual trust by reducing the likelihood of conflict. One might say that, through the ritualized introduction process, the Fraidy Cats are honing the skill of making new human friends.

Stranger Ritual Conditioning

The overview of installing a ritualized introduction sequence is as follows:

1. Upon graduation, Fraidy Cat subjects have learned at least three trained skills that they practice with their main handler (including one affectionate behavior, like bunting, headbutting, or rubbing up against handler).
2. Skills are practiced in a particular order with the main handler until fluent.
3. Practice the entire ritual with familiar people.
4. Introduce the first unfamiliar person.
5. Introduce strangers who are “scarier” and less experienced.
6. Cats “self-intro” to visitors.

Training Space

Before graduating from Fraidy Cat, subjects acquire the behaviors associated with stranger ritual training while living and training in areas of the shelter that are not accessible to visitors, to limit unplanned and potentially fear-eliciting exposures. Program cats live in multistory Ultralite condos, with each level measuring 30” by 36” in rooms that are shared with human-friendly conspecifics, who can model friendly behaviors. In early stages of the program, great care is taken to alleviate the stress of transition to shelter life. Before actual training begins, the cats are observed through motion-activated cameras to note their behavioral repertoire and food preferences. Throughout the training process, handlers follow each cat’s observed treat preferences, including food reward type and delivery method. For example, lickable treats can be delivered on a dish, a lick mat, the floor, or directly from the tube, without requiring the cats to come near to collect the reward. Dry treats can be flicked from the thumbnail, without unnecessary hand or arm movement, dropped into a dish, or slowly and quietly placed into the cat’s living space.

Ritual Components

As soon as Fraidies are readily taking treats in the presence of trainers, they are trained in exercises that eventually make up the stranger ritual. The specific behavior components of the ritual can vary depending on the learning history of each cat. For example, some cats are more fearful of the presentation of hands than others. In this case we wouldn’t use finger targeting in their training but may instead shape rubbing against a handler’s forearm or leg. In this article, we’ll describe the most common behaviors used in Fraidy Cat training and stranger rituals, but for success in a wide variety of cases, it’s recommended to train to the preferences of each cat. What stranger ritual components do have in common is that they generally take little time and skill to train, as they are simple behaviors that the cats have already learned to encourage them to approach and solicit affection from their main trainer.

Capturing/Shaping Eye contact

Offering eye contact is a typical foundational behavior in Fraidy Cat training. This is something that a cat can offer an unfamiliar person from a great distance away, so it allows them a certain degree of control over their proximity to handlers while training. Eye contact also often ends up being a default behavior or a “start button” behavior that gives the cat the ability to initiate other exercises later in training. The use of default behaviors occurs throughout Fraidy Cat training, with the goal of giving the cat the perception of control over exposure to potential fear stimuli and reducing the stress associated with those exposures.
Training cats to offer eye contact is typically a matter of capturing. The trainer waits for the cat to make eye contact, then immediately offers the preferred food treat. If the cat is not immediately looking toward the trainer’s eyes, this behavior can be shaped by initially reinforcing glances in the trainer’s general direction, then selecting for glances that are directed at the face, then toward the eyes.

Autoshaping Finger Targeting

Once the cat is comfortably and reliably offering the trainer eye contact, the next step is to move on to other exercises that involve more direct interaction. The goal of this exercise is two-fold: 1. To help the cat feel comfortable with close interaction with the trainer through classical conditioning, and 2. To eventually have the cat touch the tip of the handler’s finger with their nose.
We assume at this point that the cat is too fearful of human hands to approach them and touch them calmly, either because of conditioned fear responses or lack of exposure, so the first step is to condition an association between the presentation of the trainer’s index finger and a treat. The process, incorporating eye contact as a default behavior, is as follows:

1. Trainer situates themselves in the training area at a distance where the cat can remain calm, displaying no fear-related behaviors. The trainer has the cat’s preferred food reward in hand.
2. The trainer waits for the cat to offer eye contact to initiate each trial.
3. The cat offers the trainer eye contact.
4. The trainer presents a finger at a distance close enough to be noticeable to the cat, but great enough so that no fear-related behaviors are elicited.
5. The trainer presents food to the cat, regardless of the cat’s response to the movement of the trainer’s hand.
6. Trainer again waits for the cat to offer eye contact before the next trial.

As the cat begins to associate the presentation of the trainer’s finger with the offering of food, the finger becomes a conditioned stimulus that elicits behaviors associated with food: orienting, approaching, sniffing, and touching. It is worth repeating that the food is presented regardless of the behaviors offered in response to the finger presentation. If the food is valuable enough to the cat and the trainer has selected an appropriate distance from the cat, they will automatically offer closer approximations to targeting.

Capturing or Shaping Bunting/Rubbing Objects

By the time most of our Fraidy Cat program subjects are reliably making eye contact and finger targeting, they are displaying some prosocial behaviors in their main trainer’s presence, like rubbing on items nearby as the trainer approaches. It is important for carers involved in the cat’s daily feeding, cleaning, training, and enrichment to understand that this bunting and rubbing does not necessarily constitute an invitation to touch. Touching when the cat has not obviously solicited affection by initiating contact can elicit a fear response and set the cat back quite a bit in the behavior modification process.
Instead of testing to see whether the cat accepts petting, the Fraidy Cat trainer uses capturing to encourage the cat to increase the rate of this prosocial behavior. They do this by being ready to reinforce any sign of rubbing or bunting as soon as they enter the training space. It is important at this stage and throughout the training process that they keep their eyes on the cat to minimize the risk of missing desirable behaviors.

Putting Bunting/Rubbing on Visual Cue

When the cat is reliably offering bunting or rubbing on objects, the trainer can start putting this behavior on cue. The ultimate goal is for the learner to eventually make affiliative contact with an offered hand, so a common signal for this behavior is a hand presentation. However, for many of the cats undergoing this training process, the typical hand presentation is already a fear stimulus. In the past, Fraidy Cat trainers generally presented their index fingers as a cue for rubbing, since the cats had already associated this movement with treats, but we have since discovered that having separate signals for finger targeting and rubbing has been linked to cats offering rubbing against the trainer’s hand more quickly. For example, we will often show our loosely cupped fist with a crooked little finger extended (imagine the stereotypical pinky up in tea-drinking etiquette).

1. The trainer spends a minute or two reinforcing bunting/rubbing against an object until the response is fluent.
2. Immediately after a food reward has been consumed, the trainer presents their pinky at a non-threatening distance.
3. The cat offers bunting/rubbing on an object.
4. The trainer offers a food reward and removes the signal.
5. The trainer repeats steps 2-5 until the cat is reliably offering the rubbing behavior after the presentation of the hand signal.

Bunting Against Trainer’s Hand

Almost all of our Fraidy Cat learners who have fluently demonstrated finger targeting with their handler and are reliably offering bunting in response to the presentation of a hand signal will quickly begin to offer bunting against the handler’s hand. To encourage the transfer of the bunting response to the trainer’s hand, it can be helpful to offer the hand signal gradually closer to the cat, but always far enough away to avoid eliciting a fear response and never initiating contact with the cat.
Before practicing bunting exercises, the trainer starts with a minute or two of finger targeting, as always, waiting until the cat automatically makes eye contact before initiating each exercise. Beginning with finger targeting can help to encourage the cat to make contact with the trainer’s hand when bunting. When the cat is fluently targeting the trainer’s finger, the trainer can move on to training bunting.

1. The cat makes eye contact with the trainer.
2. The trainer offers the pinky signal for bunting.
3. The cat bunts an object in the environment.
4. The trainer delivers a reinforcer.
5. After four consecutive fluent responses to the signal to bunt an object, the trainer can offer their pinky slightly closer during training, looking out for stress responses, like looking away, leaning away, stiffening, etc.
6. Trainer repeats steps 1-5, until the cat begins to initiate contact with the trainer’s hand while bunting.

Alternative strategies are used to capture and shape affectionate behaviors in cats who may become excessively aroused or aggressive when hands are presented (making autoshaping finger targeting risky) or in the case that the cats do not offer any rubbing in the presence of the trainer. For example:

1. Walking past a shelf can be captured.
2. The trainer can select for passes with incidental contact against the shelf.
3. Next, the trainer reinforces passes with longer contact or with greater pressure.

If the cat is comfortable enough in close proximity to the trainer, this approach can be used to shape rubbing against the trainer themselves.
Incidental contact can also be trained with prompts. A cat can be encouraged to move back and forth between two bowls to collect treats, as in the Two Bowl Game (Valgma, 2020). Once the cat moves between the two bowls fluently, non-threatening objects are placed between the bowls and the cat receives treats for interacting with these objects, climbing over or under, going around, or making incidental contact. After practicing with several objects in between the bowls, the trainer inserts themselves in between the bowls and captures any interaction with their own body. The trainer can then select for contact with greater duration and pressure to shape rubbing.
Once the cat is reliably offering rubbing on any part of the trainer’s body, generalization of the behavior to other body parts follows quickly. For example, if the trainer captures incidental contact in the standing position, the first point of contact is typically the lower leg. When this leg rubbing is offered freely, sitting cross-legged can encourage the cat to offer rubbing on the trainer’s knees, torso, elbows, then hands.
When the cat offers rubbing on the trainer’s hand at least four times in a row with fewer than five seconds in between trials, the trainer may interject brief bouts of scratching after the cat has initiated bunting and directly before the food reward is offered. To make sure this transition to petting without treat rewards is successful, it is important that the trainer:

1. Only scratches the part of the cat’s body that is in contact with their hand at the time the cat rubs up against them.
2. Keep the motions of the hand to a minimum. If possible, the trainer moves only their fingers.
3. Gradually increase the duration of scratching motions, from about one half a second to three seconds of scratching (as long as the cat maintains contact for the entire duration) before treating.
4. Continue offering a food reward after scratching for a number of trials, until prosocial behaviors are consistently observed in conjunction with the bunting, like approach with relaxed tail up, leaning into the trainer’s touch, longer periods of contact with more of the cat’s body, purring, closed/semi-closed eyes, etc. At this point, the trainer can omit the treat rewards and observe whether the rubbing behavior persists with scratching as reinforcement.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Even after the cat is consistently soliciting affection from their main trainer, the entire ritual would ideally regularly be practiced in order, culminating with the scratching exercise as freely offered by the cat. The typical routine is:
4 x Eye contact -> treat
4 x Eye contact -> finger targeting -> treat
4 x Eye contact -> bunting against pinky -> treat
4 x Eye contact -> bunting -> scratching -> treat
At the end of the ritual, if the cat is receptive, the trainer can offer more scratching and petting on the sites offered by the cat, always ceasing contact every three to five seconds to give the cat the opportunity to solicit more affection.

GENERALIZATION

When the Fraidy Cat consistently and fluently conducts the entire greeting ritual with their main handler, it is time to conduct dress rehearsals with other familiar caregivers. These could be the staff and volunteers responsible for daily tasks like feeding and cleaning, but never anyone whose presence is known to elicit fear responses from the cat in question. Preferably, the first practice “strangers” are quiet, calm people who have already been briefed on the stranger ritual process or, better yet, they’ve had experience carrying out stranger rituals with other learners. Stranger rituals should only be conducted with one “stranger” at a time, until the cat is reliably successful at completing them.
To ensure that the cat is comfortable enough to participate, each introduction begins with the “stranger” offering treats by gently tossing them toward the cat, if possible. When using lickable treats, it is best to use the cat’s preferred treat delivery method, either on a dish, a lick mat, the floor, directly from the tube, without requiring them to come near to collect the reward.
The main trainer is present during each subsequent introduction to ensure that:

• The cat shows no sign of stress during the ritual and is eagerly offering behaviors and collecting treats.
• Reinforcers are being delivered in a timely fashion. Although each person the cat meets will have their own portion of treats to offer as reinforcers, the supervising trainer also has their own treats in hand and is ready to mark reinforceable behaviors to make up for less-than-ideal timing.
• There is, as much as possible, more than one way for the cat to receive the food reinforcer. If they don’t rub, they can finger target. If they make eye contact, but won’t target the offered index finger within one or two seconds, they can still receive the treat. If they don’t make eye contact with the stranger, they still receive free treats.
• The cat is offering the expected behaviors in the expected order. If the cat begins to offer other behaviors, especially ones that have also been reinforced with treats, it can be a sign that they are not comfortable proceeding with the introduction. In this case, reinforce the other behaviors and, in the meantime, re-evaluate whether the food reward is valuable enough or whether the “stranger” could be made more approachable by having them sit on the floor, sit farther away, remove a hat, move more slowly, etc. It’s also important to consider whether the novel person was the correct choice for the cat; it’s possible that the cat could benefit from more practice meeting relatively more experienced, calm, and quiet individuals.
• The “stranger” is having a good time, too! Ideally, an introduction would proceed until the cat solicits affection, but if this takes longer than expected, humans can get frustrated. If the trainer notices that the ritual is taking more time to progress than usual, the introduction can finish at a point in the process where both parties are still having fun. This is another opportunity to re-evaluate “stranger” selection or whether the cat was ready to practice with new people.

Now that the cat has had at least two successful dress rehearsals with familiar people, meaning that the ritual takes no more than 10 minutes until the cat is soliciting affection, it is time to incorporate the introduction of truly unfamiliar people. At Friends for Life, newly graduated Fraidy Cats participate in a generalization phase where they practice rituals with six novel staff and volunteers, in shelter uniforms and plainclothes. Practice “strangers” are selected based on their experience with fearful cat introductions and each individual cat’s preferences. Inexperienced strangers are coached about what to expect and shown a video of this cat’s ritual, without the cat present. It can be so hard for people to pay attention when there is a cat around!
The ultimate goal is for the Fraidy Cat to have met such a large variety of people that they begin to show these behaviors on their own to any visitor at the shelter, even without their main trainer present. At Friends for Life, practice strangers are recruited from staff and Shelter Training and Enrichment Program (STEP) behavior volunteers, numbering approximately 250, to help the cats learn that meeting new people is fun, no matter how they look, smell, sound, and act.

CONCLUSION

Because of Puu’s relative lack of exposure to humans in the first years of his life, it took him a relatively long time to graduate from the Fraidy Cat program: 13 weeks to solicit affection from his two most familiar shelter friends. But, because of his stranger ritual training, he was able to meet and solicit affection from his adopter at their very first meeting. Puu’s adopter continues to send us updates, including this one:

“Puu is definitely a social butterfly who greets anyone who comes in from his Kuranda tree. He also is demanding when he wants his back scratched (always) and meows incessantly until someone stops whatever they are doing to give him a good scratch… My sister and I agree that he is definitely the sweetest cat we’ve ever met.” (Charleville, 2023)
Training Puu to routinely approach and solicit affection from new people has clearly worked in his favor. In Brown and Stephan (2020), he would have been categorized as an unapproachable cat, whose stranger ritual practice could have reduced his length of stay by as much as two-thirds. Of the cats who were part of this same study, from 22 U.S. no-kill shelters, 43% of them were categorized as not interactive. Depending on how representative this cohort is of the shelter cat population at large, it is not inconceivable that training cats to exhibit friendly behaviors toward shelter visitors could have a great impact on adoption rates and shelter stay-related stress.

References

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Melissa Taylor, CBCC-KA, CSB-C, CSB-D

Melissa Taylor, CBCC-KA, CSB-C, CSB-D is the Behavior and Training Manager at Friends For Life Animal Shelter, a progressive animal welfare organization in Houston, Texas. At FFL, Melissa heads an animal-centered behavior program which includes in-house animal care, shelter training and enrichment education for volunteers, community outreach, and inter-shelter consultation. Melissa has logged more than twenty years in shelter animal behavior, starting with an internship at the ASPCA’s Animal Behavior Center in New York City. She developed a lasting love for cooperative care from training livestock and wildlife as the coordinator of the Behavior and Training Department at the Houston SPCA, and applies the same principles to the dogs, cats, exotics, and humans she works with now at Friends For Life.
Melissa is happiest when she has a chance to use data to create innovative projects to improve the lives of shelter animals and the people who care for them. For example, she started the Fraidy Cat Program to reliably shape and generalize prosocial behaviors in undersocialized cats. Melissa’s non-compulsive, choice-based training and behavior modification program is associated with a 67% drop in the number of long-stay dogs at Friends For Life.
Over the course of her career, Melissa has focused on the development of shelter programs related to animal behavior. She has partnered with other shelters locally and around the world to start behavior volunteer, fearful cat socialization, enrichment, and animal-centered staff training initiatives.
Melissa was awarded the 2022 Member of the Year Award by the Association For Professional Dog Trainers due to her work as co-chair of the APDT Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee examining the experiences of BIPOC members of the professional dog training community. She is passionate about the role that social justice issues play in the advancement of animal welfare.