Is your cat a devilish genius?
Cats’ intelligence has long fascinated pet owners and researchers alike. The latest scientific findings shed light on various aspects of feline cleverness, allowing us to appreciate their unique abilities. Measuring cats’ intelligence involves assessing their cognitive abilities and problem-solving skills. One standard marker of cat intelligence is their ability to adapt to new environments and learn from experiences.
Recently, I read Calla H. Knopman’s Measure Your Cat’s IQ: Tales from the Devilish Genius to the Feeble-Minded Fuzz Ball. This book is packed with ideas to estimate a cat’s IQ.
For example, you should consider how your pet reacts when you feed them.
Suppose the cat doesn’t eat his food but only stares at it, especially when it’s a vegetarian, biological, green variety. In this case, you’re likely dealing with a “devilish genius.”
I had my cat Chettoh take a few challenging tests to assess his IQ (which I suspect is way above the feline average).
The Cats as Analytical Beings Test comprises four stages, each harder than the previous one.
Stage 1: Sensorimotor Test, a.k.a. ‘out of sight, out of mind test.’
Here, we test the cat’s ability to understand object permanence.
According to the book mentioned above, you are supposed to:
Show the kitty a toy and keep their attention by playing with it. Then hide the toy behind your back or someplace out of sight and see if your cat finds it. Kittens and young children would have no idea what happened to their toys. [However], most adult cats immediately go behind your back to retrieve the toy, wondering what is wrong with you.
Unfortunately, Chettoh doesn’t like cat toys. One might object that an almost sixteen-year-old cat is elderly: of course, he doesn’t want to play with a cloth mouse like a kitten. I doubt that’s the problem, though. Chettoh never loved cat toys, not even when I first brought him home on April 24th, 2009, in a shoebox with a punched lid.
Soon, I realized that eating, sleeping, licking his fur, and using the litter took up 98% of his time. Sometimes, he enjoyed a bit of hand-to-hand fight (literally) with his human mom. If I only tried to stroke him, he would become a biting and scratching little monster. This attitude soon earned him a nickname: Morsy, Italian slang for ‘someone who bites.’
So, I can’t use a toy to assess Chettoh’s sensorimotor prowess. Still, I have another anecdote to exemplify his uncommonly analytical mind.
Like many cats, Chettoh occasionally needs to expel hairballs. This happens mainly during the shedding season. And the consequences are rather unpleasant: he often barfs, usually in the house’s most hidden and hard-to-reach corners. Trying to solve the problem, I went to a pet shop and bought a medication tube. According to the instructions, the yellowish jam had to be spread over the cat’s kibbles. Only a few small doses would suffice to eliminate the worst hairball symptoms.
Well, it didn’t work. Chettoh became pickier than usual with his food. He refused to eat whenever he smelled the tiniest amount of yellow jam. Out of ideas, I resorted to reading the tiny printing on the patient information leaflet. “In case of difficult cats,” it said, “the product should be smeared on the animal’s paws.”
At first, this seemed a breakthrough. But, as often happens, it was too good to be true. Chettoh gulped all his food, carefully licking every last scrap of medication from his front paws. Also, he stopped throwing up. However, he soon became addicted to the yellow jam. He began refusing even his favorite food (chicken kibbles). All he cared for was a generous amount of that drug on his paws. I tried to wean him out of it by gradually reducing the amount I put on his paws and hiding the medication tube. Unfortunately, Chettoh readily guessed the secret hideout (a kitchen cabinet) and meowed for hours in front of it.
Who said cats forget anything after a few minutes? Nonsense. It took Chettoh long, frustrating weeks to overcome his addiction.
So, here’s the answer to the Sensorimotor Test: my cat does understand object permanence.
Stage 2: Preoperational Stage test, or ‘the subject learns to understand images and symbols.’
Wolfram Chettoh hates being alone. Although he pretends aloofness, wherever I go, he follows. According to many experts in cat behavior, cats see humans as parental figures who care for their needs. So, Chettoh fears I might not be around if he suddenly wants to eat, drink, or be cuddled.
So then, he pretends to sleep nearby when I’m working at my desk. I say ‘pretends’ because he’s keeping tabs on me. If I move to another room for just a few minutes, he waits for me to come back; if it takes longer, he joins me: to the kitchen to be taken care of before anything else, or to the bathroom to sleep on the sink while I’m doing whatever I’m doing. Not to the bedroom, though. The bedroom is off-limits for Chettoh. For years, I let him sleep at the foot of the bed. Then I realized he immediately relocated to my pillow when I was gone. Once I got fed up with removing a layer of black hair before sleeping, I shut the culprit out.
But what Chettoh hates the most is when I leave home for longer. He knows me well, having been my devilish pet for over fifteen years. He knows, for example, that I’m out for work on weekdays from about 7:30 AM until 4:00 PM. He’s also aware that I usually go out for pizza on Sunday nights with friends. So, he gets nervous whenever I don’t follow the usual routine.
For example, if I suddenly change my slippers for a pair of shoes and turn off the A/C unit, Chettoh rightly understands I’m about to leave. In this case, he waits for me by his food bowl, which happens to be near the main entrance, and demands (with loud, heartbreaking meows) an extra supply of kibbles and cuddles.
Stage 3 and up: Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication Tests. Some experts (e.g., Kalla J. Knopman in the already mentioned How to Measure Your Cat’s IQ) say we shouldn’t talk “human” to cats. Instead, we should try to imitate their language so that they, in turn, can imitate us.
My experience with Chettoh tells a different story. Cats have no problem understanding our language. They may ignore us sometimes, but it’s almost always a pretense. So, there is no need to make ourselves ridiculous with pitiful attempts at feline language. Cats will usually act disgusted and annoyed when not outright scared.
Indeed, devilish genius cats can and will choose several ways to communicate with humans.
VERBAL COMMUNICATION:
(1) meowing:
This is standard cat talk. However, Chettoh seldom meows, with rare exceptions. When he was a kitten, Chettoh used soft meowing for whatever necessity. Then, his communication techniques began to diversify as his cognitive function evolved.
(2) complaining:
This is a long, high-pitched lament. Chettoh complains when he fears I might forget about him. It happens either when I come home after a long day at work, and I’m not fast enough to take care of his needs before anything else, or when I’m about to leave. Chettoh always knows when I’m going out (see above). Other occasions to complain are when I’m doing something stupid and pointless (from a cat’s point of view), like fixing a leaking sink or vacuum cleaning.
A variant of the complaint sound is the “hurry up” call. This is a fast, impatient “meow,” telling me to get a move on when filling his food bowl.
(3) chirping:
A deep, short rumble is how Chettoh says ‘thanks.’ Sometimes, Chettoh is a well-behaved cat, so he’ll “thank me” when I feed him, stroke his head, or play with him. Also, Chettoh chirps when he wakes up after one of his frequent naps.
(4) growling:
Chettoh seldom growls, but when he’s distraught. During our long cohabitation, we only had a few fights, most of which can be attributed to my (often) limited understanding of his personality and behavior. One day, for example, I left my smartphone in a restaurant. I was so upset that I began lamenting: “Oh my goodness! Where is my phone? Oh no, I lost my phone!” Now, cats are good judges of human moods. Chettoh, in particular, knows when I’m upset. The only problem is that he usually thinks I’m mad at him. So then, he hits first before I turn aggressive (I wouldn’t, but that’s what his predator/sometimes prey mind tells him). That time, the growling little monster sank his teeth and claws into my right shin.
NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION:
(5) purring:
As a kitten, Chettoh seldom purred. Only when I picked him up, and he wanted to show his harmlessness, did he display this most peculiar cat behavior. Getting older and more socially clever, Chettoh purrs much more often. For example, he purrs when he greets me after work, when he’s eating, when he lies on my computer keyboard (and I’m trying to use it), when my friends come to visit, and they want to cuddle him, and also when I’m sad, and he wants to cheer me up. However, as most cat owners know, cats purr not only when they are happy or friendly. Some cats will purr when sick or aching, like a female cat I owned as a kid, who softly purred right until she died (from eating poisoned food).
(6) twitching the tail:
Like most adult cats, Chettoh “speaks” a lot with his tail. This happens when he is happy (vertical, parading tail) or angry (low, left-to-right, fast swishing tail). Indeed, a sure indicator that a cat is about to attack is the rapid movement of its tail. This happened on the occasion I mentioned above. However, I didn’t know my kitty enough to catch the red flag. Chettoh also uses his tail when he’s too lazy to meow. For example, when Chettoh is pretending to sleep next to where I’m working at home, if I ask him a question like: “Did you eat your food?” or: “Would you like some more food?” he twitches his tail twice. Of course, if the question is, “Did you make that mess in the carpet?” he puts on his “Sleeping Furry Beauty” act, worthy of an Academy Award. Sometimes, Chettoh uses his tail to express curiosity. When investigating a strange noise, for instance, or trying a new food, he shapes his tail like a question mark.
(7) rubbing the head on your leg, ankle, or a nearby object:
Apart from the usual rubbing against their owner’s ankles, which many cats use to transfer their scent and claim you as “property,” grown cats may use this non-verbal communication for more complex reasons. Lately, Chettoh has adopted the “Muttley talk” from the name of the dog character in the 1970s Hanna-Barbera Productions TV series Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines. In that funny cartoon, Muttley, a dog, points at his chest to ask for a medal. Similarly, when Chettoh wants to be stroked, he first rubs on a nearby object and then points at his head with a paw.
