Saying someone or something is retarded has a couple possible meanings.
Scientific:
Technically to be retarded you have to take a IQ test and score 69 or less. Since there is no scientific IQ test for cats it is impossible to say that a cat is retarded on a scientific level.
Word Smith:
In modern English the definition for retarded has been expanded to mean anyone who has is mentally handicapped. The problem is that mentally handicapped is not defined and is something that people associate with anyone who is less smart then they decide is normal or average. So with this very broad definition a cat is guaranteed to be retarded when compared to most humans and could be retarded when compared to other cats who the evaluator decides are more or less intelligent.
Slang:
The popular use for the word retarded is summed up by meaning something that is ‘stupid’. Once again stupid being a very loosely defined word in this context and it boils down to anyone or anything being eligible for retarded based on the evaluators discretion.
We had a brain-damaged cat – emergency C-section for the mom, and she was the last one out. Our vet was a good friend, and I was in the room with them, helping to clamp cords and rub the kittens to life. I didn’t think this one was going to make it, but she did. However. She had definite problems, and would run into walls several times a day. We called her “Dain Bramage”.
This reminds me of a Thurber story mentioning people who were scornful of dogs’ intelligence, citing examples of dogs found running loose who allegedly were so stupid they couldn’t find their way home from the next block.
Thurber raised the possibility that the dogs might not want to go home.
My niece had a dog that was eventually diagnosed with a brain tumor. They thought he was just psychotic or feeble minded for quite awhile. He was afraid of the dark and would burrow into a corner of the laundry room and yelp feebly until somebody turned on a light.
Distemper can cause brain damage, especially in the later stages. If the cat doesn’t die but recovers, it’ll likely have brain damage. My sister had a cat like this - as a kitten, he caught distemper. We saw he was in trouble - he’d just started walking in circles - and took him to the vet, who gave us some medicine but didn’t think he’d make it. Turns out, he did. But he was “off” after. You could even see it in his face, in the eyes and such. Poor guy.
I think my cat had distemper. Hes a little awkward about jumping and can be clumsy about his back feet. Hes improved since he I got him(from the pound) though, and jumps more now, though he always hesitates and plans it carefully.
Hes also effectively mute, though that might be because he seems to be a Chartreaux cat. http://fanciers.com/breed-faqs/chartreux-faq.html. Once in a while(like once a month) he will squawk something at me. Its most like a buzz-chirp sound.
So he communicates by pantomime and demonstration. He doesnt seem to be short upstairs though, as he takes hand signals as well as voice commands, and I can ask him to find the other cat.
I had a cat who didn’t clean himself. He was absolutely filthy, with dirt and burrs stuck in his fur all the time. Considering the extreme attention to fur cleanliness most cats display, I’ve often wondered whether he was retarded.
I have four cats now, and there is a definite difference in their cognitive capacities. The nicest of the four is also the one who has never been able to figure out how to get through the cat flap. She sees the other cats do it and it just doesn’t sink in. The cat flap leads into a sun room where we keep their food, water and litter boxes. We’ve left her out there for hours, hoping she would stumble on to the solution, but it never works. We have to prop open the flap or she’d never come in. This same cat has refused to go outside for about the last five years. Maybe she knows her limitations.
Then there is our smartest, and certainly meanest cat. I do believe that cats, like many people, use their intelligence for evil.
I came on this thread specifically to post that link; a friend of mine linked to it today elsewhere, by coincidence. It’s the dog’s bollocks.#
The dog in that link had previously been mistreated, kept in a tiny kennel with little interaction since puppyhood, the kind of treatment that sometimes leads to retardation in other species, and no wonder, since it deprives them of learning opportunities.
That link also caused to google Dog IQ tests and the first one I found was almost certainly the one used by hyperboleandahalf. It’s not an actual IQ test, of course, but it doesn’t invole timed testing of certain skills that dogs would usually have, such as recognising a smile in a human or being able to get a treat out of an upturned cup.
That makes it pretty similar to IQ tests, IMO, particularly if you were using it in a diagnostic way, to rule out actual illness or whatever.
I tried it with my dog and the dog we look after, but only because it was fun and interesting, and we didn’t do it properly because we had two dogs and two kids and one of the dogs is 7 months old, so the results wouldn’t exacytly be meaningful. however, it was interesting to see what most dogs are cognitively capable of doing.
Presumably there’s something similar for cats. It’s a WAG (heh), but surely vets must assess animals for cognitive decline in some situations because it’s often a symptom of other diseases.
#Meaning ‘awesome.’ The term came up a couple of times in recent GQ questions so I thought I’d take the opportunity to use it in the context of a terrible pun.
My parents had a cat that was very smart, but that didn’t display most of the expected cat behavior.
She never groomed herself and had a large dandruff issue. Given that she was a solid black Tonkinese, this was pretty obvious. We’d have to shampoo her regularly. Fortunately, she loved water - she had learned how to jump in the sink and turn on the tap. One of her favorite tricks was doing this when visitors came over - she’d get soaking wet, then come over and wait for people to go “Nice kitty!” and pet her, then recoil when they discovered she was sopping wet (hard to see this on a black cat).
One time there was a large ant walking across the floor in front of her, and she reached out and batted it with her paw. Her smug expression of satisfaction at catching something turned to sheer terror and she started shaking her paw to get it off her… “What! It’s not dead!!! Get it off of me!!!”.
We always assumed (we’d gotten her as a used cat, so we didn’t know for sure) that she’d been taken away from her mother too soon and was never taught how to correctly apply her instinctive behavior.
lmfao nice phrasing; I’m going to start using it to describe my cat Heidi, who I adopted from the shelter when she was (roughly) 3 years old or so. Tina & Leon were 8-week-old kittens when I got them from the shelter, so they weren’t really used, just “waiting”.
I would certainly hesitate to use psychiatric terms for cats (and other domestic animals) but from experience there are not only great differences in intelligence (manifestation), but also clear changes. Herd dogs are notoriously difficult to find/breed, work horses can be fantastic, or completely dependant, ad nauseum.
I have had a cat that “went mad” actually attacking people that it cuddled up to hours earlier, when it happens once you could imagine some event, but when repeated with different people, at “random” moments you have to admit the possibility of illness.
I suspect a form of cat “psycosis” , event caused trauma, with my actual beast. A typical “alley cat” that has never been closed in, in the two preceding houses, now panics immediately outside. Cats do have a sort of pleasure/discomfort trigger in their brain, and seem to lack temporal memory, but I still can’t figger…
