Oh, they evidence complex social behaviours alright. We have two females who were introduced t each other well into adulthood - if I were a cat sociologist, I could write theses on their interactions.
Yeah well…I basically agree with everything you said in your post. But you note I said “not social in the same way”. Cats are social. I said as much in my first post.
Just not like a pack animal would be. Different intelligence. They don’t hunt together in coordinated ways. Different. Is what I’m saying.
Depends very much on the breed. Border Collies, Retrievers and Poodles always come somewhere at the top of the list of intelligent dog breeds and most dogs from these breeds will fetch if you ask them to do. They have been bred to work for humans and it doesn’t make them less intelligent because they’ll play a seemingly dumb game of fetch, over and over.
My temporary cat and I did some research this evening when I introduced a new toy: a party favor “helicopter”. She went nuts over it, possibly thinking it was some sort of bird.
She retrieved it over and over for about fifteen minutes until she appeared to get tired.
The toy is basically a stick with a propeller on top. You roll the stick in your hands and let go for it to fly away. This kept her interest longer than any other toy so far, and she’s never retrieved so many times and so quickly!
I should mention that I encouraged her with a big fuss and vigorous petting each time she brought it back to me.
A couple of times she went to it, picked it up and dropped, then returned to me. In that case I didn’t fuss or pet her, got it myself for another throw, and then she retrieved it properly.
So I’d say she successfully “fetched” about 80% of the time during this play period. I’ll try to get a picture of her doing it next time.