What education requirements did you have to go through to be a cat behaviorist? Whats your favorite part of the job?
I personally went through the certification process of the Animal Behavior Institute. Out of the options for online schools, this one seemed the best. Others require yearly membership fees in order to be endorsed by certain behaviorists. I just have my certification of CFTBS - Certified Feline Training and Behavior Specialist.
My requirements were three full-course classes, Feline Development and Behavior, Feline Training, and Feline Wellness and Nutrition. Along with that I had to do 40 hours of volunteer work with cats. I did closer to 140 hours by the time I got my certification. 200 is closer to what I’m working with now. As per most certification courses, your most important grade is your final exam. So even though I had 100% on every quiz, if I got less than 75% on a final exam, I would not pass the course (I did, though. My first semester was rough because I had never DONE online classes before, but once I got the hang of it I did much better.)Some folks do much better with other options. Animal behavior as a degree. Although I haven’t found one that focuses on cats personally, they COULD be out there, I’m just not sure. Typically it’s a wider range of animals under the behavioral science umbrella. Other certification programs also did not do enough for me in my opinion. I STILL get spam mass message calls/texts/emails from another school that I did not go to because...idk why. It’s been two years.
My favorite part is obviously working with cats. I feel like that’s a given. I love working as a sort of translator between cat and human so humans can understand just what their cats are saying to them.
Granted, that’s half the struggle. Humans are stubborn as hell. They do not like being told they’re wrong in any way, so I also have to work with that immediate kick back and word things INCREDIBLY carefully when working with clients. No lie, I took a peer education course in college and that class, while COMPLETELY unrelated to my certification, has helped me SCORES while dealing with people. Cats are easy. People aren’t.I do love talking to the people who are open minded. The ones who ask questions. The ones who want to know everything about the best way to care for their cats. The ones that go above and beyond. The people who care SO much. They erase the stress of the people who just KNOW that they know more than professionals because of -insert laundry list of reasons here-.
It’s hard. It can be heartbreaking. But honestly it’s been so worth it.
