So, how do you know your behavioral training is working? Have shrimp for dinner. We don't sit at the kitchen table (too much "pile it" on it), so we're right in a place Charlotte can get at us. The first time we ate shrimp for dinner we had to keep moving our plates to keep her from stealing our dinner. Then next time we still had to move them quite a bit, but not quite as much.
Last night we had shrimp and our plates remained on our laps. We did have to tell her no, waver her off a few times, etc., but we didn't have to keep picking up our plates and moving them away from her. It wasn't that she didn't want those shrimp, it was that she's learning the boundaries of acceptable behavior.
As I was serving dinner, I had dropped one shrimp as I was taking them out of the pot. I peeled it for her, cut it up and put it in her dish. It was gone in seconds. I had one of mine that left a bit in the tail and I gave it to her after dinner. She got no reward while we were eating or even next to our plates. She got her tidbit in the kitchen, after we were done.
Currently, we're working on getting her to differentiate between "let me out in the garage" vs. "I want my dry food" vs. "I want my wet food". She's been crying at the garage door but not wanting the garage. So, I've been started to tap places for her to reach, while asking if she wants "scoops" or "wet food". We'll see how that goes.
Years ago, with my first cat, I once pushed her out the door in the middle of the night because she was crying at the door. Turned out she was out of water. She did learn to get a bit more specific when she cried in the middle of the night.
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