My cat, Eccles, not only undertands words of command but he can also speak fluent English, Mandarin Chinese, German and is learning French, Latin and Russian at the moment.
Obviously I have never heard him speak, why should he lower himself to speak to me, after all I’m merely the provider of food and shelter
Mr. Balls understands a number of commands, and aloof cat cliches aside, he responds to them rather intelligently. He knows that “get down” means to scrunch below my computer monitor if he’s on my desk, but to jump to the floor if he’s on my lap. He knows that “be nice” means to retract his claws if he’s playing too rough, and “don’t fight” means the flea shampoo experience is only going to get worse for him if he doesn’t stop resisting.
They’re remarkably perceptive. He can tell whether I’m reaching out to pet him or play-fight with him based on body language clues that I’m not aware of myself. He always knows though. It’s kinda creepy.
Our old cat Cayuse took way too many trips to the vet during one trying year. We always managed to get her in her crate easily enough. We kept the crate out so we wouldn’t signal our intentions in advance. Find her, scoop her up, stuff her in the crate. No prob.
One time, I was singing while getting ready to go. The song started out to the dog, who we crated while we were gone: “you put the dog in the box and shake it all up” etc. When I went for Cayuse, I started singing, “you put the cat in the box and shake it all up.” By the time I got up the stairs to find the cat, the cat was under the bed. It took me 5 minutes to get her to come out. (She always came running whenever we whistled a tune, preferably Summertime from Porgy and Bess.)
Well, some dogs can.
I have two dogs, and one of them understands “No!” perfectly well, while the other just stares stupidly at me wagging his tail. And yet, he’s perfectly able to figure out what the sound of the treat jar being opened means. Go figure.
My cat not only clearly knows her name, but understands differences in tone of voice when it’s said.
She likes to jump up on the counter where the other cat’s food is and eat it (the food, I mean, not the other cat). If I see her on the floor making ready to jump up there and I say, “Misty” in that a short, low-toned way that parents use when a child is doing something wrong, the cat will utter this little “maow-maow” sound (like, “Aw, you never let me have any fun…”) and walk away.
But if she’s just laying down across the room, and I say “Misty!” in a more high-pitched, friendly sort of way, she will often trot over to me.
Both cats clearly know what “stop it!” means, too. If one is clawing at the rug, and I yell “Stop it!”, she stops. The other one usually gives me a look like, “What? I’m not doing anything.” Mind you, a little while later the former will again claw at the rug. So cats clearly can understand words and even tone, but apparently have great difficulty with the concept of applying that meaning to anything beyond the right here-and-now.
BoyKitty knows his name, I just don’t think he always cares that he’s being spoken to. Cinnamon doesn’t seem to have any idea that we have a word that we associate with her. I think I probably spend more time trying to learn their language and communicating with them than they do with me. Maybe it’s that dogs feel more dependent on their working relationship with us for their food and comfort, and a cat never really forgets that they can do without us so they have never learned to put the effort into learning commands. Not that a dog couldn’t hunt for it’s own food if it had to, I think they just don’t fully realize it to the extent that a cat does.
Perceptive - that’s the right word for cats. My two cats will come when called (I usually get both cats for the price of one, because there might be tuna involved!), and they stay off of the coffee table and kitchen counters because I’ve trained them to stay off of there (well, they stay off when I’m around - I can leave a piece of chicken on my plate on the coffee table and come back to it untouched). I trained them not with a squirt bottle but with the loud “psst” and clap my hands method - they don’t like being startled. I used the squirt bottle on my cat, Feather, once, and she looked at me like she was going to pack her bags and leave. They absolutely communicate with their humans - they have a lot of vocalizations, and they use all of them on us. My cat even sings with me - I sing the “Featheroni Baloney” song to her, and she mews between lines.
[total derailment]Wow, you’ve actually seen a mousehole in a baseboard? Did it look like a cartoon hole – sort of a micro tunnel – or more of a round hole a mouse could squeeze through?[/td]
Russells aren’t the only opinionated dogs. The resident salukis are perfectly capable of understanding commands they’re familiar with, and their names, but respond only when it suits them. The anatolian, OTOH, is more willing to do what you tell her. Reluctantly if it doesn’t involve fun or food, but she does it.
The thing with training cats is that they require clearcut incentive to take to the training, whereas for dogs, the fact that you’re giving them attention and appear to be pleased with their behaviour is usually sufficient.
If the cat is not interested in playing fetch with you, then you’ll never be able to train her into returning the paper ball until you make it worth her while. 
So I thought but of the two cats I have, only one seems to be scared of the spray bottle.
Weird but the other one likes getting sprayed on his butt hole. When I pick up the spray bottle. the one who does not like it, quietly slinks away. The other one however comes forward and turns his back on me and waits with tail raised until I spray his ass with water. A couple of squirts and he trots away some distanceand then sits down and licks his butt dry.
Rinse lather repeat.
Me: “Tur-KEY”?
Phoebe: “Rrreow-OWL?”
She then trots into the kitchen and waits patiently at the spot where sliced turkey has been known to mysteriously fall from the sky.
I believe that cats, like dogs or people have varying degrees of intelligence. All the cats I have now respond to their respective names. They understand NO!, but that may be tone of voice.
One of them seems to understand “Bring it here.” He fetches.
I had one cat that seemed to know several words like, “outside” “treat” and “no claws.”
He always seemed to know when we were talking about him. If anyone said “Vet” he would hide for hours.
I was young enough that I don’t really remember the mousehole itself well, but IIRC it was small (like quarter size or less), started at floor level, and was kind of oblong vertically but not the perfect mouse archway like in cartoons. I think the new baseboard/molding was a redecoration in the house as this stuff was very thick, and strong wood; you could see (because it didn’t sit entirely flush with the wall around that point) down a little ways and see the top of what looked like another hole, maybe being scratched up in an attempt to get up and over the tall baseboard before giving up and finding a better entry elsewhere.
This provided our cats with a tantalizing spot - they could hear the pitter-patter/scritching of a mouse more easily around there, smell them more easily there, and at some point in the past it had been a mouse-hole, so the cat in question would zero in on that spot as “mouse!” (They would occasionally kill mice in the basement, but couldn’t get there unless we let them downstairs.)
My SO’s mom’s cat understands. He does tricks like a dog. Sit. Stay. Shake a paw. Highfive. Roll Over.
She had time on her hands and trained him. It’s freeky.
Actually, our dog says to himself, “Gee, I’d better not get caught doing this again!” and does it only when we’re not around. Of course, then he acts so guilty that he essentially leads us to the scene of the crime when we get back.
The cats all know when we’re telling them to quit something, but they all respond differently. Say I come upon one cat eating out of another’s bowl (a daily occurrence). Socks, the big black-and-white tailless cat, will run and hide. His attitude seems to be that I don’t want him to eat. Nico, the Siamese cross, will brazenly meow at me and go to her own bowl as if she’s just made a perfectly understandable mistake. Cisco, the giant gray-and-white tabby who is the perpetual kitten of the group, will meow at me piteously and try to go back to eating the other cat’s food because, obviously, his own bowl is empty and he has no choice! They react in much the same way when I catch them doing anything wrong: Socks acts as though I’m an ogre who plans to kill him, Nico seems to be saying, “What? I’m not doing anything!” and Cisco will pause and then continue the behavior because, really, he wants to.
I’d say the cats understand me just as well as the dog does. They just don’t seem to be quite as interested in what I have to say.
All of my cats, past and present, have known how to spell. I yell “E-A-T,” and they come running into the kitchen and sit waiting by their bowl. If I spell any other word, they don’t respond.
My cat usually comes when called. He also understand “nap time” when I lay down and pat my chect (he likes to nap on my tummy).
He doesn’t care too much about dinner time, but at night he gets a small chunk of raw liver, and he understands “liver-time”.
But in all three cases it may just as well be the tone of voice, etc.
Let’s just say our two cats have been so tuned into what we’re saying that we’ve sometimes wondered if they really do understand English…
even if we’re speaking in a completely normal voice, and we’re speaking only to each other (and not to cats), they seem to know when we talk about them. And when we start commenting how one of them needs to lose weight, the fat cat usually gives us a disgusted hurt look and leaves the room. it’s uncanny.
:dubious:
Have you verified that this is, indeed, a cat you’re dealing with, and not, say, a rat with exceptionally long fur?