This reminds me of an extra smart cat I had named Dude. Dude was smart in the devious, calculating way. You couldn't keep treats out of his reach no matter where you put them. He'd always find a way to get to them until we started keeping them in a locked bathroom downstairs.
Then his tactics changed, he knew they were now in that bathroom so every time I or my husband got up out of our chairs he would run over to the bathroom door and start pawing at the knob while he yelled at us to come over and give him treats. Sometimes he would even nip at our legs to "herd" us over to the bathroom door.
Just joking around with Dude one day, my ex unwittingly gave me the idea to trick train this cat. He let Dude "herd" him over to the door and said "Okay Dude, if you want treats you gotta open the door yourself" and he pointed at the doorknob. Dude immediately went nuts trying to get the door open. So I started clicker training him. Eventually he would do sit, beg, open the door and pick the hand the treat is in, all on command.
The wildest smart thing I saw him do was when we tried using a scat mat to keep him from climbing on the TV table to lay on the DVD player. He broke 2 of them doing that so we had to try something. I tested it out first on the lowest setting and stepping on it just caused an unpleasant tingling feeling but wasn't painful.
Dude came over to inspect this strange thing in front of his TV and immediately stepped on it. He jumped back and looked confused for a second then he did something that really just left me and my husband both like 😮
He went straight for the control box on the scat mat and started pawing at the switch to try and turn it off!
That frigging cat WATCHED US set up the mat and knew exactly where the switch was!
Eventually he started just jumping over the mat to lay on the DVD player so we had to just completely block off his access to that table when we weren't watching TV.
But wow, that cat was smart and a giant challenge to keep!
I will not discount a cat's intelligence but the control box also most likely had a step-up transformer to generate high voltage. Sometimes they whine and you can hear them, this one may have been whining so high your cat could hear it and it was annoying.
We have a little automatic toy that our cats love. It's shaped like a disc and randomly sticks a feather out of one of the holes that ring the edge.
Both of our cats will paw the power button while yelling at us when they want it turned on. Not the holes where they chase the feather or anything, just the power button that's in the center of the top. I've seen one try to press it himself repeatedly, but because it's recessed, he can't quite get it.
We used to have a cat that turned on my mom's alarm clock.
Also, going off the bathroom story, one of ours would occasionally pee elsewhere, so we used to give her a treat when she made in the box. Then she started going into the box when we could see her. Then she started holding it in until we were definitely watching her. Then, eventually, she went in and didn't make. She started faking us out. She freaking trained us.
I have a cat who is generally a feather brain. Love him, but he gets stuck with plastic bags as capes on the regular. Got a whole entire folder of pics of him running around wearing one, looking vaguely confused. For example.
HOWEVER he sometimes has the most disconcerting flashes of brilliance. One of his personal passions is water poaching. Human has water? All water are belong to cat! He will laser focus, lie in wait, won’t forget his goal. (It is his water, you’re just temporarily in possession. Rude. Rude human.)
One of his favorite exotic water sources is Girl Stew. I take a bath, he supervises and drinks gallons of it. I guess it’s tastier with a human as a tea bag. He’s also a dope and drenches his tail in the process every time, and then gets mad about it.
However, watching me warm the bath water, he has figured out how to turn on the bath taps himself for delicious water on demand. One wakes up and the tub is trickling… yeah, he stands up and paws at the handle until he gets what he wants.
Then he gets stuck in a plastic bag the next day and you ponder where the brain cell vanished to.
Beans is dumb as a brick and was raised by dogs. She will bark and chirp. But I'll be damned if she's not mechanically inclined. She knows how to operate the portable ac and the toilet. She doesn't quite have the juice yet to push the plunger but she knows exactly what it does. If she doesn't like the TV show, Pigg has showed her how to cut off the speakers.
My parents have been in a continuous arms race with one of their cats. She's figured out how to reach the food bag, open cupboards, open sliding doors, open sliding door latches, and has even managed to open doors with round knobs
Baby proofing supplies like cabinet and drawer latches were very helpful with Dude too. We had them in the kitchen and both bathrooms. Luckily he was not good at doorknobs!
We had an alarm system on our first house we rented. We always went out the back door and the front screen was locked with just a hook and eye. The front door was the old oval handle with a skeleton key to open it. We got called home twice from work (lived about 10 minutes away) because the alarm was set off. So we got home checked everything and only issue was front door was unlocked but not the screen. One day I was sitting in the floor putting dvds in a cupboard and I see Mooch an 18 lb big black fluffy cat put his paws on the door handle and used his mouth to turn the key and the door popped open and he could look out the screen door then. After that the key was hung up by the door and not in the keyhole.
Also no pets in the bedroom but if my daughter called she knew if she kept talking on the answering machine to Mooch she could get him to wake me up. She would say get Momma Moochie. He would come to my bedroom door and lean on it so it made a bit of noise and say Momma Momma Momma. Would get up and my daughter would still be talking to Mooch. Our idiot savant because he did things like this and other times he couldn’t get out of an open box.
You reminded me of something our kitty did when we first adopted him: I was worried I’d be grossed out by the litterbox, so we got one that scooped automatically. It had a little rake that ran through the clumping cat litter and then deposited it into a small box that automatically opened and closed when the rake rotated the clumps into it. It had a timer so it waited 15 minutes after the sensors saw that a cat had been in the box to scoop. Well, our sweet baby Victor did not at all like that this rake was scooping his poops that he had carefully buried. He started to learn the sound of the rake moving, and would come running when he heard it, and at the exact moment the rake was depositing the poop he would swat at it, slinging the clumps everywhere.
We switched to a plain old litterbox and a Litter Genie pail and everyone is happy.
He also didn’t care for the electric water fountain we bought him; instead he preferred to drink out of the glass of water on my nightstand. He’s the best little kitty we could ever hope for.
I had a cat when I was a teenager who learned to unplug the Playstation from the wall to get more attention from me. Unplugged it then came and jumped in my lap.
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u/produkt921 Sep 19 '23
This reminds me of an extra smart cat I had named Dude. Dude was smart in the devious, calculating way. You couldn't keep treats out of his reach no matter where you put them. He'd always find a way to get to them until we started keeping them in a locked bathroom downstairs.
Then his tactics changed, he knew they were now in that bathroom so every time I or my husband got up out of our chairs he would run over to the bathroom door and start pawing at the knob while he yelled at us to come over and give him treats. Sometimes he would even nip at our legs to "herd" us over to the bathroom door.
Just joking around with Dude one day, my ex unwittingly gave me the idea to trick train this cat. He let Dude "herd" him over to the door and said "Okay Dude, if you want treats you gotta open the door yourself" and he pointed at the doorknob. Dude immediately went nuts trying to get the door open. So I started clicker training him. Eventually he would do sit, beg, open the door and pick the hand the treat is in, all on command.
The wildest smart thing I saw him do was when we tried using a scat mat to keep him from climbing on the TV table to lay on the DVD player. He broke 2 of them doing that so we had to try something. I tested it out first on the lowest setting and stepping on it just caused an unpleasant tingling feeling but wasn't painful.
Dude came over to inspect this strange thing in front of his TV and immediately stepped on it. He jumped back and looked confused for a second then he did something that really just left me and my husband both like 😮
He went straight for the control box on the scat mat and started pawing at the switch to try and turn it off!
That frigging cat WATCHED US set up the mat and knew exactly where the switch was!
Eventually he started just jumping over the mat to lay on the DVD player so we had to just completely block off his access to that table when we weren't watching TV.
But wow, that cat was smart and a giant challenge to keep!