Cats with more than one brain cell!

[Toddlerteaplease]

What sort of things do they get up too? My friend mentioned something her cat used to do. And it made me realise that my pair, beautiful and lovely as they are, really don't have much going on upstairs. They don't get up to mischief.

Neighbour's cat used to distract me by doing something naughty so I'd get up to stop him and then as quick as lightning stop the naughtiness claim my vacated chair. It was the way he'd focus on me and the chair as he was being naughty (usually nudging something breakable off a shelf).

When my cat fancies a mid afternoon snack she systematically pulls tissues from the box one by one, staring at me until I give in and get her biscuits.

Paws bangs on the door if the window is shut
Carries food off the worktop onto the floor
Taps on my face if he needs to go out

My cats bully my plants if I'm not doing what they want me to be doing - straight up look me in the eye and then either launch themselves at the plant or bite bits off.

One of the cats will also bounce over my head if I'm sitting and he wants to play. Stop. And then make eye contact before running away. If I don't go after him he will continue doing it.

One of the cats requests to go outside by either pawing at the front door or, if he wants to really grab my attention, purposefully clangs the laundry cupboard door closed.

They will occasionally bring me toys if they want to play and then stare at me whilst meowing if I don't instantly acquiesce to their demands.

They know the words "do you want a treat" "do you want to play" and "do you want to go for a walk" and go to the correct location for each one if I say it and wait for their treat/toy/me to open the door.

Oh and one of them plays hide and seek with me. He will mostly hunt me but sometimes he will hide and expect me to find him. If I take too long he will yowl to let me know where he is

Sits by where she wants attention so near her toy to play, by her brush for a groom, by food stand for food and Dreamies, the window sill for the heater
Can fetch a toy and interacts incredibly well
Pretends she hasn't had any Dreamies when DH comes home so tries to play us off against each other
Won't wake DH as he's a grumpy sod in the morning so she waits until he's awake before she goes in
Hedges her bets with snacks

Our boy sits in the bath and screams until you put the plug in and run him enough water to drink.

Sometimes at 4am 🙄

Responds when she hears her name- comes running. Has learned tricks like high-five, sit, twirl etc..

Knows at least 5 minutes before our car turns into the driveway. Other family members have noticed her get excited and paw at the door. Few minutes later DH or I drive up to our house. She knows.

Plays hide-and-seek: properly ducking her head down when she sees you or half peeking out from behind a doorway. Can pounce when she "finds" you. Nearly gave me a heart attack that one

Can also be equally clueless Cannot see a fly settle right next to her. Looks very surprised if she farts

When I ignore her soft mews, gentle paw taps & light walks across the bed at 4am for breakfast she bolts to the front door & screeches like a banshee. She knows I’m up like a shot when she does that. I’m in a flat & worry about the noise & neighbours.

She knows the sound of her bowl when I place it on the kitchen counter.

Just like Amrapalli’s she knows how to play hide & seek properly and if we don’t react the first time she’ll race over ‘tag’ us with her paw and run away to hide.

Ivy steals bags of dreamies out of the cupboard, she actually opens the cupboard with her paws. Her little sister Betsy barely has half a brain cell so she is employed as the "lookout" stood at the kitchen door ready to warn Ivy of human slaves approaching 😂

Breaks into the kitchen bin - it is now weighted with a bag of ball bearings and is lockable. He still manages to claw the edge of the bin bag if it's visible at ALL and pulls it through to see if any food comes with it.

Can open the pull out kitchen cupboard we used for cat food. Ate through the bag to get to biscuits. Ate through pouches to get to meat.

Now cat food is in a larder style cupboard, but it has two doors (used to house fridge freezer) he opens the bottom door to get inside but hasn't worked out how to get to the upper level yet as that door is still closed. He ate through a weetabix packet to let us know he had been in there.

Regularly convinces the other adult in the house that the other one hasn't fed them, does this when they are in a meeting so can't check.

Caught a bird through a cracked open bathroom window ...

On the other hand - regularly gets his head stuck in empty crisp bags and can't get out. This also happened once with a bag that had contained chinese prawn balls..

I am thinking maybe he's not so much clever as incredibly greedy? He is a bengal x british short hair!

She knows the sound of my car. Knows what upstairs, front room, bedtime and out the kitchen/bathroom mean. Knows what go ask mama/dad means, knows the various names we use for her, knows the sound of cat yoghurts being opened even in a different room. Knows when its bedtime and who should go upstairs (note, never husband). Lots of things really. She's a very clever little girl.....and then we visit daughters own cat and its um... yeah. He's special

Our two, when they were young and sprightly, worked together to distract parents birds away from a nest so that one could get to the babies (thankfully we saw and intervened and they were grounded!) We were amazed at their ability to work as a pair when they mostly don't even like each other!
Nowadays (they're 15yo); boycat rarely uses much brain at all, other than to wander round the house yelling at us til we work out what he wants. And girlcat is brainy enough to look at the weather through the window and decide to stay in, but stupid enough to try and attack boycat THROUGH the window, and wonder why it doesnt work...

Oh and she can tell time. Around 9pm is teeth brushing time and I have to bribe her with tuna. A few minutes before she’ll stand next to the tuna cupboard and patiently wait but if I’m late will start shouting.

I'd be careful what you wish for.

We had two littermates, a bright one and a thick one. Thick one is still alive and sitting on my bed. Bright one loved exploring and dancing on the rooftops - but sadly died young on the road after a trip to catch the koi carp in the pond across the road.

Thick but alive is preferable.

We now have a ridiculously bright Arabian Mau. Learnt things like how to use his microchip cat feeder in 10 minutes - took it's previous owner 6 months. But he has his own opinions and my god he expresses them loudly. And often at 2am.

Thick, alive and quiet is the way to go.

Scratch the side of the bed at night when I’m reading then quickly jump up and steal my side of the bed when I get up to stop him. He’d close his eyes and pretend to be asleep. No one falls asleep that quickly.

When he was sleeping on the bed and I’d pick him up to take him downstairs overnight if he was lying on his side he’d put his back paw on the inside of my wrist as I tried to slide my hand under him and gently push back. It’s so simple but devastatingly effective in stopping you lift them.

Now we have a moggy who can’t rely on brain cell one to talk to brain cell two and I miss the naughtiness and general mayhem Bengals bring to the house.

My two have occasionally worked as a pair and I was astounded. Snorg is most definitely the ring leader. She will go and find cheddar if I tell her too. But that's the limit of her abilities. I was surprised, this morning when cheddar felt I was ignoring her that her meow got more demanding!

If Basil wants anything while we are in the living room, he gets on the back of a particular chair, in order to paw at a picture on the wall and threaten to knock it onto the floor. It immediately gets our attention (little sod )

Girlcat quickly worked out that if she wants my attention & I'm on the PC, just scratching the carpet isn't enough as it's too quiet. She paws at a crinkly old style supermarket plastic bag, as that's loud enough to get my attention. If I have my headphones on e.g. gaming, she pats the back of the chair without bothering with her rustley bag.

They can both recognise the difference between me getting ready for work in the morning compared to me just getting up to stay in the house.

We have bright and thick littermates too

Boycat is the bright one, I am always amazed at how well he can communicate what he wants. Has different meows for everything and has trained me to understand what they all mean!

He wears an Airtag on his collar and knows that when I ring it at night it's time to come inside for bedtime (I didn't attempt to train him on this, he figured it out on his own!).

He understands our curfew catflap won't let him outside again until morning, unlike his halfwit sister who will scratch at the flap trying to break out.

He also knows when we are about to take him tot the vet and will hide (unlike his sister who is oblivious). What strikes me most though is that he learns each time what doesn't work, and adapts his strategy to try to prevent us catching him!

That reminds me, my clever boy who can open cupboards gets in the cat basket every time "oooh, a box like object" and then remembers what happens just as the lid closes 😅

So he is definitely "food clever" not generally clever..

We have debated the meaning of bright and thick in cats. Predecessors to current cats one could open all the doors, jump into cupboards.

The other never figured it out. What she did figure out however was how to wail pitifully in front of a door so her slaves would get up and open the door for her and generally pander to her every demand, including picking her up and putting her into the high up cupboards.

Now who is to say which one of those cats was the bright one?

Kitten2 sometimes plays fetch. She got on top of the door other day (sorry, too quick, no pic). Quite fearless.

Both of mine are clever. And they work together. The fridge now has a lock on it, but when they worked out how to open it, blond!cat would sit on the worktop beside it use a paw (& claws) to tug at the seal until it gave and the door could then be pushed open by joint effort, with black!cat at work on the floor. Black!cat would, once the door was open, sit and act as a doorstop, allowing his brother to climb into the fridge and thoroughly examine the contents; lobbing out anything that smelled worth pilfering. They had learned this need for somecat to hold the door open after they, as tiny kittens, worked out how to get into the food cupboard & promptly got stuck, which ensured they were immediately rumbled. I mean, the tiny toothmarks in things would’ve done for them very swiftly anyway, but…

They have a propensity for rootling through the recycling but also for bashing bins about the place. Stealing whatever human food they can get is rather a passion project; & my black cat has learned to unzip bags to this end. I’m a vegan, but from the way they go after my food you’d think the cats were mounting stealth raids for tuna not tofu (etc).

My blond cat figured out the idea of fetch by himself & will come & ask me to play it with him.

Essentially, they are Mischief On Legs, but happily they are also The Snuggliest Cats EVER & as I’ve mostly been in bed for the last couple of years, there’s more snuggling than havoc-wreaking these days. Though they do still go on the occasional rampage, important to keep one’s paw in, after all

My first cat was very bright, and him and the second cat were like office acquaintances in general day to day life, but if they spotted anything out of place in the garden...they got all Navy Seal Commando and would slink out with imperceptible expressions and nuances to savage and deter any intruder from their territory.

Current two are actual littermates, he is idiotcat and not in the slightest bit bright, his sister is much more self aware and is the brains of the family.
You can bribe him with ham/sleight of hand to take a pill, he will be cross but will immediately take a second one, cos he forgot the first bribe was pill and not the actual ham.

His sister has never yet forgiven me for bathing her in the sink at 12 weeks old as they were both full of fleas. She is 16 now and looks askance at me if we are ever in the bathroom together just in case I might attempt to do it again.

My boy cat knocked over a tub of dreamies a couple of times in the past, and now believes that knocking stuff over = treats. He will actually push something off the table then stare at it, waiting for the dreamies to appear. It works because as soon as he starts, I am leaping up to grab them as quick as I can (this has been going on for about 2 years now and is actually so stressful, especially WFH).

My other cat has noticed this and as soon as she hears him shuffling something along a surface, she will stand close by because she knows it’s treat time. She never gets her paws dirty though, always waits for him to do it.

Tortie cat is the laziest/smartest hunter, depending on how you look at it. She waits for boycat to bring something back and present it, then toddles along and swipes it whilst he just sits there with a Sound of Silence look on his face.