Use Incentives

• Unlike dogs, who are pack animals and need to please their leader, cats live as happily alone as they do in social groups. They need to please no one but themselves. Incentives like treats, wet food and catnip will please your cat and teach it to do such things as coming when called.
  
  

Instinct Rules

• Instinct tells cats to mark the borders of their territory visually with their claws and to eliminate where they can see what's going on around them but won't be vulnerable to predators. Keeping these instincts in mind when placing the cat's scratching posts and litter boxes will ensure that your scratching and litter box training succeed.
  
  

Learning From Experience

• Cats learn from experience. If your cat enjoys getting up on the countertops, it will continue this behavior, no matter how many times you tell it to get down. But if you make it an unpleasant experience by putting double-stick tape or an electronic cat training mat on the counters, your cat will learn to never go up there again.
  
  

Battle of Wills

• In a battle of wills, the cat usually wins. Basic cat training requires patience, experimentation and compromise.
  
  

Punishment

• Because everything a cat does makes perfect sense to the cat, punishment only confuses it. Spraying the cat with water, yelling at it, hitting it or rubbing its nose in an accident will just teach it to do the behavior when you're not looking and could make your cat afraid of you.