Nelson, the author’s cat, begging for food
Edward Thorndike and Ivan Pavlov were probably the first to study animal behaviour in a systematic way. Forty years later, B. F. Skinner took their ideas and moved forward, training rats (and pigeons) so successfully that some joker said he must be a magician, forever pulling habits out of rats.
My wife Sue spent much of her psychology student days running rats through mazes, and now insists on training our cats to beg before they get their food, or milk. Following Skinner, this is known as operant conditioning. Our great monster cat Nelson (he lost one eye as a kitten) is particularly adept.
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