I came home on Friday to find my kitten had apparently been
swinging on the blinds :-o  Oh, I hope I can get her trained
before they are all destroyed!  Trouble is you can't really
teach them not to do things unless you catch them doing it.

It is, isn't it :-)

M

Imagine someone you love walks in your house,you go happily to greet them,
but he/she picks you up and starts yelling at you in foreign language. You
will have no idea what are they talking about. So no, you will never teach
any animal this way.

We don;t speak animal language. Nor they speak English. So training animals
includes creating associations. Positive ones are naturally better then
negative ones. What you just done with the above yelling is a negative
association. And furthermore, not with the broken vase, but with YOU coming
home. The poor kitty has just come out to see you happily and you are
yelling at her. You do this another few times, and she'll be running away
when you walk in, not come out and greet you. Do you see what I'm saying.
She doesn;t know the vase/couch/curtains/whateva/... is important to us, or
that she has in fact done something wrong.

The only time you can yell is if you catch them doing something you don;t
like, and yell while they are still doing it. Let animal walk away, and it's
too late. My Shadow has done 3 wees on the new sofa, before I cought her.
Yes it gave me a helluva job cleaning it, and finding the right stuff to
kill the smell, but I couldn;t possibly yell at her 3 hours after she's done
it. She wouldn;t understand why.But the second I cought her doing it, I
yelled like there is no tomorrow, while claping my hands, so she took off. I
picked her up and put her in the litter tray, and immidiately changed my
tone of voice and gave her reassuring scratches. She hasn;t done it since,
and our relationship has not changed.

Gee

Today I got my american express bill and found a $1000 charge for catnip
from petsmart... so I did the exact same thing, and she sent me a written
apology!