I figure most everyone has or has had some kind of non-people friend, so why not share some stories. Though this thought came about decidedly after my oversized animated teddy bear of a cat decided to prove once again that cats are not always smarter than dogs...

He is a hyperdependent long haired ball of fluff, whose elevator doesn't seem to reach the top... most of the time. Even as I'm in the process of typing this up, he 'lost' me in the house and was crying to know where 'mommy' was. He's by no means a kitten either, weighing in at a little over 20lbs, 4 yrs of age and about 2.5' in length, he makes a Chihuahua look like a mouse.

In any event, he gets bored easily (though he can keep himself entertained for hours on end sometimes by a spot on the wall, have a divet in your drywall, he'll be sure to find it) and he can be smart in some cases. For instance he's already learned all the classic dog tricks, from sit to speak, stay, roll over, shake...

So today, inspired by the friskies pull and play toy they keep advertising I decided to make him his own little puzzle treat dispenser. I took a tissue box (as he already loves the little pop up toys from those aka the tissues) cut out the plastic lining and tossed a few treats in there. It should have been more than a large enough opening for him to fish out some treats, or knock the box over, just to get a feel for the game, while still being small enough that he couldn't simply slip his head inside.

The point is to make them figure out how to get the treats out, not how to shove their head through a tiny hole and eat.

Does my little ball of fluffiness figure this out? NOPE! He spent about ten minutes pushing the box around the living room floor trying to cram his head inside. I tried to show him again, that knocking the box would drop a treat out. He happily ate the treat then decided a more aggressive attack was needed upon the box.

Since his head didn't fit, he dove in with both his front paws, and tried to then get his head to fit inside the box....Honestly I would have taken photos of his attempt but I was beside myself laughing. Needless to say, the poor boy met with failure once again, which honestly surprised me that he didn't get at least one treat to come out given his determined attack.

So after getting the box off him once more, I tried yet again to show him... look tap the box from the back, treat pops right out... okay?! NOPE... He once more happily ate the treat, then decided maybe, just maybe if he couldn't get into the box going head first, he'd try from the tail end.

Seriously to watch a cat, try to position himself to stick a back leg into a box first, and then try to pull himself up to that back leg to climb into an opening clearly too small, is a sight I never, ever, imagined I would witness in my lifetime. And for his efforts, he only managed to get the treats trapped completely in the back of the box.

I tried in vain to show him again, how this was suppose to work. He happily ate the single treat I dislodged for him and then laid down on top of the box.

Cats are not always smarter than dogs, or even the fleas that torment them.

I bet that was an interesting thing to watch!

Dr. Amen MD (who does the PET scans on the brain etc) has
lectures on PBS during pledge times. On one lecture he stated that cats do not have much of a prefrontal cortex and therefore cannot "plan" like dogs can. Dogs have about an 8-10% prefrontal area by comparison.

But cats do learn, from my experience. And my current cats really know language. Maya will raise a paw now to ask "please"...for food or to be let in from the porch. I taught this quickly with raising my hand in a begging gesture (fingers curled inward) and saying footie dootie up!...she learned this in one day. But she did not think it up herself (that would be a cortex executive function). Sometimes she will raise both paws, but not often.

They will follow a command from us, too accompanied by language. For example, to jump up on a little table I say and point with my finger... jump up on the chair...point point, and then the table. And bingo that only takes one time and they do it. Weezie is older and more experienced with language but they both figure things out this way with a bit of help. (it helps that this little table is where I often give them a "treat". )

I think cats are very intelligent, but theirs is somewhat different than dogs.

This is one of my favorite cat videos... from Australia.
The owner is a dog trainer and also trains cats (obviously). this video never fails to make me laugh.
Check out his channel on YouTube..all of his videos are worth watching!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRbakPKgU5Y

Early training of Didga as a kitten:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh-Biuq33ic

I loved that video... but I don't know on the 'planning' thing... or I suppose there might be exceptions to the rules.

While my ball of fluffiness has a brain that much like his exterior, his older brother, does seem to plan. Frighteningly well...

I often wonder what was in the breast milk of the mother for my monsterous cats since I know what I feed them. But the older brother, affectionately known as Squeaky Toy, is about the smartest animal I've come across, excluding his sadly passed on brother, Hopper, even more the monster size wise. Hopper weighed in at nearly 35lbs of solid muscle and well over four feet in length (that's not including the tail) before he met his maker at 5 years old likely from a heart attack.

But back to his diminutive by comparison brother, who is just barely larger than Snowcap (master fluffiness), though considerably less now in body weight (age is 16 years and summers aren't kind to him).

Regardless the cat has been seen collecting and burying worms follow rainstorms and this is inevitably followed up by a little mole death camp in the front yard come morning. He can catch as many as 8-10 moles (at least that is what he'll litter the front yard with) in a single night after setting his 'traps'. Further he seems to know when the squirrel breeding seasons and pupping seasons are. He'll go from a yard filled with little squirrel bits, to allowing the squirrels to hop right on top of him. (A squirrel conservationalist??)

He along with his brother and their sister were infamous back in the day for following a pack like hunting pattern which terrorized the local dogs, birds and squirrel populations. (Thankfully Hopper was a gentle giant who unlike his sister and brother would give a nice bath to the captured prey before sending off on it's merry way. Occasionally offering nudges of encouragement to the poor creature who no doubt had their life flash before their eyes.)

At my husband's urging I tried the puzzle box with Squeaky last night, to see if he'd fair better than his brother. He did, before I could even set the box down he'd already reached his paw in and swiped a few treats. And under a minute he had extracted all the treats from the box and looked up at me with a look of disgust for making him work for them.

Little seems to get past him, and my neighbors are often shocked to learn that when I'm whistling from the front porch, it's to call my cat. He also knows quite well that when 'mommy' stops whistling and starts counting his little tail better be hightailing it into the house.

So I've one brainiac and one maniac for cats. One whose allowed outside by proving he can handle the great outdoors and protect the home from the multitude of various assorted snakes in the area, and one who will forever remain indoors for his own protection as he continues to lose battles with inanimate objects and has yet to defeat a dust bunny.

I have two Golden Retrievers and 2 Maine Coon cats. The dogs are trained. The cats just laugh at them.

However .... we had a neighbor, Raymwho trained his cat to jump into the air to catch a small, wadded up piece of paper . . . and he'd (the cat) would jump up in the air, catch the paper wad in his mouth AND return it to Ray to throw again and again.

Okay another story from the world of cats for me. I'll reminisce a bit about Hopper. The biological brother of Squeaky Toy.

Where have all the pens and pencils gone? That was a frequent question when Hopper was still around. You could never find any instrument of writing. But there was a trick to retrieving them as we found out. Laying out a blank piece of paper.

I was trying to jot down a quick shopping list, and as usual there wasn't pen or pencil one to be found in the house. Frustrating since we had just picked up a package of pens. So I set down the paper I would have written my list down on and went on the hunt. Now my DH and I both had been coming across various 'scribbles' on sheets of paper and both thought the other had been bored or something.

But regardless, I returned to the living room from my futile hunt for a pen, and sure enough, on the paper that I was going to write my list on, was a ton of scribbles and more so there was a pen on the floor beside the coffee table. Haunted house??? I grabbed the pen before it could disappear again and went off to grab another sheet of paper for my shopping list.

Shopping list done, and nothing else really to do, I decided to do a bit of ghost hunting. So I laid out another sheet of paper on the coffee table and headed around the corner into the kitchen. Nothing happened... guessed the ghosts were shy, about the only thing I saw was my Hopper, hopping up onto the coffee table and inspecting the piece of paper left out.

I gave up and headed further into the kitchen to grab a drink, came back around the corner just in time to see Hopper jumping off the coffee table. But more than that, I saw a pencil this time hitting the floor as he jumped off the table. I went over and sure enough the same scribbles we'd been finding were on the sheet of paper.

I grabbed the pencil, and went after another sheet of paper. Laid it out on the coffee table and with more patience waited to see exactly what was happening.

The darling which was my Hopper once more jumped up and inspected the paper before hopping back off the table. I chose not to follow him to his apparent 'cache' of pens and pencils but waited for his return. He came trotting back down the hallway, pen in mouth and hopped up on to the table and proceeded to grab the pen between his two paws while still holding the back of it with his mouth, then dragged his paws down the paper, making the same scribbles we'd been finding throughout the house.

I jumped out at him, but didn't scold him, which was fine since he was already looking up at me with a 'busted' face. His response was to give a little meow, and loud purr and look down at his masterpiece with what could only be considered satisfaction.

For the rest of Hopper's life time if anyone needed to find a pen or pencil, we only had to lay out a sheet of paper and let him doodle a bit first.

Just to show, that cats think they are really people!
You should save the pages and frame them! I would... or put them in a binder for future reference. (dated on the back, of course!)

Weezie likes to play with our phone. We have a 2 phone land line, with the master in the kitchen on the counter.

Weezie has decided to listen in to the blinking screen. It has a touch pad with down as play back and left arrow as go back and the up square as delete.

Sometimes (usually in winter when she cannot go out and is quite bored), we'll hear the the phone messages being played back. Yep, she is listening to the little peoples who live in the phone (her concept probably). And she has been known to delete at times too.

All Maya does with paper is shred it. When she is upset, storms coming, or over tired she shreds paper. She rips off pieces and throws them into the air with a shake of her head. We always keep a Panera carry out paper bag on the floor for her to use.

Well it seems my dog, Sydney, obeys if better better than our kids did as they were growing up. When I tell her it is bedtime, she goes to her bed. If I tell her to go to her room she does.

One other thing is if she is in my lap, all I say is I am getting up and she jumps off.

Did you ever get that on video? It would be a hoot! Not to mention maybe even a money winner on America's Favorite Videos!

Karen S

Starznight; may I have your permission to copy your screen name and the cat stories to my friends on other boards?

Years ago I used to write stories about my two cats that were real-life, but funny, too. Friends used to love the humor in them.

I've lost the part of me who could write creatvely, with humor, about every day cat adventures.

I used to have a large envelope that held print-outs of the cat stories. I don't know where they are now. I have a few of them on a thumb/zip drive, but not all of them.

So be sure to keep copies of your stories. You have no idea how glad you'll be 20 years from now when you fondly think back to how funny and how loved they were.

Karen Sawyer
A Pet Parent for over 40 years

I can just see him anxiously awaiting a treat for HIM when he "cons" you into demonstrating how it's done.

Wilie little rascals. But so darn cute!