I have mentioned my dumb cats here on occasion. After pondering the facts more deeply than I should, I cannot decide if they really are stupid or if they are actually quite intelligent. I mean catwise.
Camry, he’s more impulsive than stupid. Nervous, jumpy and playful-- like a gigantic kitten-- he’ll run headlong into a wall chasing a moth even though he, just a few seconds ago, ran into the same wall chasing the same moth. This is not because he’s dumb as a post with a nano-second memory span but because he cannot stop himself from chasing the moth, not even long enough to think about how he just smacked himself cross-eyed on that wall.
The other cat, Plunket, I just can’t figure out. One thing he does has me flip-flopping on the level his mental abilities. I’ll walk into the bathroom and he’s in the tub. I’ll order him out of the tub. He very sneakily creeps backwards until he’s hidden behind the shower curtain and stands really, really still. Sometimes he risks peeking one eye out to see if I’m still standing there.
Besides making fall down laughing every time, it makes me wonder: is this a really smart thing for a cat to do or a really retarded one?
I think I’ll go with smart, too. I think my cat is quite dumb (basically can’t open anything if she can’t bang it open with her head), but she has trained us to open the coffee table doors for her, so maybe that makes her smarter.
Smart. You keep ruining it by laughing though. Next time he hides behind the shower curtain, say “good cat” and leave. Then he’ll know he outsmarted you.
Sigh. I’m afraid if Camry gets caught between the door and the screen door one more time, I’m gonna have to give up hope on him. He’s done that three times since we had the new door installed last fall.
The last time he did that, I’d just come in. I heard him yowling and saw him frantically wave one leg under the door. I pulled on the door, thinking I was crushing him and breaking his poor leg but it wouldn’t budge. The Plunket came screaming down the stairs. Really, this cat barely moves. He’s so lethargic that he’ll let you push him from one end of the bed to the other with your feet and not even uncurl himself. Yet there he was, streaking down the stairs-- and launching himself onto my leg.
And there was the real Stupid One, trying desperately to shake on cat off of one leg while simultaniously trying to rip the front door off it’s hinges because it was killing the other cat-- you could tell by the godawful screeching and yowling-- and WOULD NOT OPEN.
Yeah, I had locked the door. Once I figured this out and unlocked the door, Camry strolled in like nothing. I tried to chase Plunket out of my house, that ungrateful bastard, but he wouldn’t leave. He hid under the bed for hours. I still have the scars on my leg.
The question is, when Camry chases his moth, does he give you that look, like, ''I totally know what’s going on here?" My cat, Merlin, will chase the infamous laser, stop, make sure you thoroughly understand that he knows you’re controlling it, and then start chasing it again.
And has enough sense to hide behind something big enough to actually, you know, hide him. It puts him several steps up on the late, lamented Maggiemoo. She liked to hide behind things like the casters on the office chair, or a desk leg, the whole time wearing an expression of “Heh heh heh, they’ll never find me here!”
Your cats aren’t dumb, the are just over excited. “Real” cats spend most of their waking times, stalking and hunting.
Your cats don’t have to stalk and hunt, they get food for free.
So when an opportunity to practice their natural hunting skills present themselves the kitties get so excited that they can’t help it.
They love to practice and want to hunt, so stalking that moth is becomes the subject of intense focus. And hiding and stalking you from the bathtub is so much fun for the other cat, they want to practice.
I’ve seen tons of nature documentaries and not in one has a tiger bashed his head repeatedly against the same rock trying to chase down fawn or a lion sneak behind a tree when an old wildebeest spies him at the watering hole.
I would go down to the movie theater and pay good money to see such a documentary, though.