"The whole exercise of shooting a cat is pretty nightmarish because they don't care about anything. They don't want to do what you want them to do," says Ethan. [...] "The cat was just horrible." The Age, January 17, 2014.
Clearly, the Coen brothers were in dire need of an animal trainer who knew what they were doing. The old notion of cats being "aloof" and "untrainable" is about as antiquated as the view that dogs "need to be shown who's boss" or else they take over the pack.
Cats (along with most other animals including us) respond extremely well to positive reinforcement focused training methods. They get their "untrainable" tag because contrary to dogs, you can't "make" a cat do anything. But you can motivate them do almost anything with the right training approach. And, along with a well trained cat, you get a pretty sociable one too.

Rajah the cat loves his training just as much as Kiara the Whippet does. He offers his latest trick whenever he catches my eye (at the moment, this is lying down flat on his side - a trick he learned by watching Kiara). His eyes light up when he "gets it right" and gets his reward, just like my dogs'.
Whilst training dogs with positive reinforcement is gaining traction around the world, the way most people view cats has not followed suit, as the Coen's example shows. Fortunately, things are changing, with trainers and behaviourists such as Pam Johnson-Bennett and Karen Pryor publishing books and online information about training (and better understanding) cats.

So, I won't be watching the movie. I know I won't be able to help observing the cat and more than likely, given the attitude of the makers of the movie, I would see its signs of stress and anxiety. If only they knew how easy it could have been - and how much more fun for both people and cat alike!

Only a few weeks ago, Rajah recovered from a desexing operation which included abdominal surgery. He had just rediscovered the joy of climbing trees, when on Saturday he didn't respond when I called him - very unusual for this well trained cat :-)
Soon after he started vomiting and wouldn't move. I rushed him to the Animal Emergency Centre (what do people do who live miles from one of these places?) and he was immediately admitted, by then panting heavily. Had he poisoned himself on the lillies in the garden? Had he finally eaten one of the small pieces of Lego he loves chewing on? By early next morning, they finally knew what was wrong: his stomach was sitting in his chest. Probably congenital, exacerbated by some form of trauma (pictures of him jumping off trees came immediately to my mind.) I didn't even know such a thing was possible. There was a hole in his diaphragm, and the stomach and parts of his small intestine had moved through it and were squashing his lungs and heart.
A complicated operation, requiring a specialist surgeon, was all that could save him. In the end, with the vets assuring me that the chances of Rajah leading a normal life again were good, I decided to go ahead. He nearly died during surgery, but he made it through.
Now he is home. I can only hope the vets were right, and he will be able to resume a normal cat's life to make all the pain he has to go through worth it. At the moment he can't bear to lie down, his nose is snotty and his breathing rattles, but flashes of his indomitable personality come through in the few minutes after a good sleep and a small meal. Late tonight he crawled on my lap and finally, awkwardly, lay down and slept. I told him I loved him and that all will be good.
I can only hope I have made the right decision.

About two months ago my kids and I  found a little kitten staggering out from under a scout hall. We gave it water and food and after a few days, managed to bring it home. After I overcame my cat allergy with massive doses of Vitamin C, he ended up staying, and is now called Rajah. By now he loves clicker training, sitting in laps and winding his way around Kiara the Whippet's legs. He also has a fabulous Recall :-). Kiara has been undergoing intense training to change her from a - potential - cat killer to a cat lover. I used a combination of Katen Pryor's ("Curing a cat chasing dog") and Leslie McDevitt's (LAT, Puppy Ping Pong) approaches, and so far, things have been progressing well. They even have (heavily monitored) play sessions together now, while Giro and Rajah have unanimously agreed to ignore each other's existence.