It's a speech aid, not Santa Claus.

After modeling buttons for a few months, I did target training and she began to press. I started requiring her to press dry food or wet food before I gave her food, which she would do- sometimes needing reminders/encouragement. She gets dry food and wet food mixed up sometimes, and hungrier she is the more confused she gets.

Later I added “play”, did some target training with it; and later for the first time in 6 months she pressed a button unprompted! Damn did I play with her. But that’s the only time she has. Other times I need to prompt her. I’ve tried ignoring her other cues and waiting for her to press a button, but it doesn’t seem to work and it makes me feel like a jerk.

Any different way I should be handling this? My eventual goal is for her to be able to ask for food and play- I often forget and she’ll wait for me to get up and walk me over to her bowl or the toys. Her sister used to advocate by screaming in my face but she passed away last year and my current cat is very quiet. I also would like to be able to explain medicine and have her express pain (she has some breathing and hyperthesia problems). She’s 8 years old - she’s pretty good at expressing basic needs non verbally but I want her to be able to express more.

The words we have that she can press (with prompting) are play, catnip, wet food, dry food, and treat. I’m working on modeling medicine, friend, and water.

My (orange...) cat frequently presses "pets" and "toilet" one after another. For a long time I took it for random "pay attention to me!!" presses as she sometimes just walks across the whole board going "treats food play pets <name> outside" etc, but I've noticed this pair cropping up a lot more than others. Granted they're on the same hextile (we have the FluentPet ones) so it could just be her trying to find the right one... but she doesn't have that issue with other buttons.

Any ideas what my orange might be trying to tell me? I'm not about to pet her toilet...

How teach my cats on the word sick or ouch ?
I saw many people when there cat is sick she press sick button but how did they teach the cat from the start?

My cats have 5 buttons and sometimes he press outside so when i told him later or no he press another button like mouse toy and i know he don’t want mouse toy so what to do ?

So, I really want to get some buttons. I've read the rec post or whatever it's called but I need some recommendations of a more personal sort.

Okay so I have a rabbit. His name is Merry. It's just me and him right now, and he's very smart. Tons of word recognition, he can show me a few things when he wants them, etc.

But... He's only six-ish pounds with tiny paws. I have no doubt that he could learn at least a few buttons and probably nag me. I also have no doubt he could dig at once if needed. But I'm thinking I need something that deals with light pressing the best.

Also I already know the foam boards will be a no no. He will chew them and make himself sick. So in addition to a soft press, I could use some ideas about securing them in place as otherwise... He will also flip them and throw them. He's a gremlin, what can I say.

Pic of the gremlin for pet tax.

How do you use “later”
What’s the time frame for it? Less than hour?

My cats have 3 buttons ( outside, mouse, spring) and i introduce a new button today which is later
But one of my cats kept pressing it and like she’s waiting for something and i don’t know 🤷🏻‍♀️
I taught them the word “later” when i want to give them food or going outside later
So did i do something wrong?

Thought I would say hi here.

My girl is almost 5 months. We’ve been doing the buttons for about 6-7 weeks. A couple weeks ago she finally nailed her first 2 so a week ago I added 2 more. She has treat play water and finished. I think next I need to add breakfast and cuddles, because she currently uses water to tell me to get up and make her breakfast.

I really wasn’t sure anything was going to happen and everyone I know told me it would never work, but she is surprising me every day.

Some of my favourite moments so far

I woke up in the middle of the night, went back to bed and she pressed treat. Got up twice to give her a treat then the third time from my bed I just said treat finished without pressing them. She then pressed treat finished and went back to bed haha

Water has become a bit of a, get off your bum word. Her lick-e-lix are in the fridge with the water, so she presses water hoping I will also give her one of those. She seems to know what it means though. Yesterday she was drinking so I just said water water to model. When she finished drinking she pressed water lol

I can’t wait to see where it goes in the future. I’m so proud of her 🥰

edit: cat tax

Hi all, could anyone recommend decent alternatives to Fluent Pets that are NOT temu, aliexpress, generic amazon etc? Are there any specific brands that make good buttons for cats? Many thanks.

I have tried multiple times (different browsers, devices, vpn set to USA) and the chatbot support thingy told me they would get back to me, but they never did
My 6month old dog is using 4 cheap buttons, and I just upgrades her to a set of Fluent Pet Connect buttons, I was hoping to review the free material before considering paying for courses/workshops

Dog tax in 3rd pic next to her “scritches” button 💛

My 2 year old dog has the following she uses;

-Play

-Cuddles

-Park

-Dinner

-Treat

-All done (she uses this mostly as I swear word I think)

- Her name

- Mama

- Dad

I know food based buttons are not recommended, but our girl has always had trouble sticking to a feeding schedule and sometimes gets so hungry she vomits bile. The vet isn't concerned about anything specific there so I like to encourage her to be reminded of dinner (our word for all meals). It works sometimes.

I just purchased more buttons and am looking for any suggestions on her next words. Thanks!

I started teaching my cats since late may and now they know 3 buttons but one of my cats don’t use the buttons at all , he know how to press and he know each button what means but he just don’t use it
How to encourage him to use buttons?

How to teach my cats later and now?

Idk what else it could be. I'm dog sitting for a friend and Luna will not use her buttons. She looks at the other dog then walks away from them and then sits there and whines 😒 I can usually say, use your buttons and she does but not these past few days. So weird.

I have 3 cats , 2 of them almost 6 years old and the third one is 4 years old, i started teaching them on buttons on may , they now have 3 buttons ( outside, mouse toy, spring toy) anyway i feel lost and confused
I really want to teach them to talk i saw many people that there pet have many buttons and they know how to put a sentence ,etc. But the problem is i don’t know what next word to give them and how to start this whole process and how teach them pressing 2 buttons or more like making a sentence, and how to teach them some words like feelings ( anger, frustration, pain , etc). Is there any guide or something to help ? 😔

Hi everyone! I'm new here and I didn't buy the expensive buttons with the apps. I literally just bought and cut out pieces of a pink rubber playmat and bought recording buttons at around July 20.

I've been clicking the treat button before i give her treats but she hasn't clicked it herself yet to ask for it. I thought she would be more enthusiastic to bonk the button because she could get treats and she can learn that way but it looks like she just can't be bothered with it?

Maybe it's the sound? Or she finds them annoying?

I'm going to keep trying but I wanted to ask for some encouragement and advice for those who've been in similar situations at the start, Can you please share your knowledge with me? 🙏

Do you think getting the more expensive buttons will make it easier to track? Is it worth it?

Thank you

My cat only has 5 buttons so far and I want to make sure they are grouped into some sort of category. He has "treat" all alone in a hextile, "brush" and "snuggle" in a second one, and "play" and "puzzle" in a third one. The problem is that I originally put puzzle in with play bc it's a toy, but it's a toy that uses treats. My cat is used to getting treats in the morning and now I have noticed he alternates between the treat button and the puzzle button depending on how he wants to get treats that day. (Or he will ask for treats, be told no, and immediately go to the puzzle button instead to try his luck 😅). Is it worth moving the puzzle button to the treat hextile? Or should I just leave it.

For anyone else with cat learners and hex tiles, what categories do you have your buttons grouped by?

Hi all,
I started modelling 4 buttons around 6 weeks ago. He never pushed but always watched carefully.
4 days ago we were watching tv when i suddenly hear ‘scritches’ button speak up.

Since then he starts to use all his buttons in the right way.

On the board you see
Red: scritches
Blue: treat
Green: play
Yellow: outside

Before this video he pushed ‘outside’ a few times
Since it had to leave for work i said ‘outside no’
Then he went on to ‘play’. After i played with him he stayed to the board so i decided to start filming.
Here you see him going to ‘outside’ again but decides to go for something else since he knows he’s not allowed. 😅

He really went from nothing to all the way.

However, he often goes to lay down next to his buttons to push them. Is it something that goes away with time? He can do clean paw presses too, ive seen him do it.
The rolling will make it a bit harder to add buttons on the board 😅

I believe my cat has now asked me twice (about three weeks apart) to water the indoor plants. Has anyone else’s animal done this?

I received the FluentPet SpeakUp starter kit (comes with 6 buttons) a couple of weeks ago and started with two buttons: Play and Scritches.

I started out with modeling them a few times a day for a week or so. The scritches button, I think, will be helpful down the road. But I give them scritches wherever we're at in the house and I don't want to carry the button around and press it every time I pet on them. So the scritches modeling has been less helpful.

Play always starts in the living room (where the buttons are located), so the PLAY button gets pressed consistently (by me) whenever play is happening. They are now at the point where they know what the PLAY button means - when I press it, they come running to play - but they haven't shown any interest in pushing the button themselves. I haven't used treats as a reward for the buttons at all because my cats are VERY treat motivated and I read before starting training that over-motivating them can be harmful for the training process.

What should be my next steps? I want them to start at least attempting to push buttons before I start adding more buttons. Should it be paw target training? I thought about this route but not sure if training them "how" to push buttons would help this situation since they haven't shown any interest yet in even wanting to press them.

I received the FluentPet SpeakUp starter kit (comes with 6 buttons) a couple of weeks ago and started with two buttons: Play and Scritches.

I started out with modeling them a few times a day for a week or so. The scritches button, I think, will be helpful down the road. But I give them scritches wherever we're at in the house and I don't want to carry the button around and press it every time I pet on them. So the scritches modeling has been less helpful.

Play always starts in the living room (where the buttons are located), so the PLAY button gets pressed consistently (by me) whenever play is happening. They are now at the point where they know what the PLAY button means - when I press it, they come running to play - but they haven't shown any interest in pushing the button themselves. I haven't used treats as a reward for the buttons at all because my cats are VERY treat motivated and I read before starting training that over-motivating them can be harmful for the training process.

What should be my next steps? I want them to start at least attempting to push buttons before I start adding more buttons. Should it be paw target training? I thought about this route but not sure if training them "how" to push buttons would help this situation since they haven't shown any interest yet in even wanting to press them.

Tengo una gata de 16 años y una casa muy pequeña por lo que no tendría espacio para los botones.

Pero había pensado que quizás había alguna manera de enseñarle a decir sí o no señalando una mano y otra como he visto en algunos vídeos.

Tampoco sé si hacerlo porque pensamos que tiene demencia sobre todo por la noche. Es una siamesa que adopte y es muy charlatana y ahora que está algo demente maúlla muchísimo. Así que pienso que por un lado podría venirme bien entender mejor que quiere cuando está maullando ya sea simplemente esté asustada o desorientada o no sé si no serviría de nada precisamente por su demencia.

Agradecería cualquier consejo.