Let's have a dumbest cat competition

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

When I was a teenager, my family had a cat who was the sweetest thing in the world, but dumb as a box of rocks.

The best incident has to do with a habit he had. The layout of my parents’ house is important to this, so here’s a bit of background. Because the house is built to take advantage of the ocean view, all of the main living areas are upstairs. You come up the stairs and you’re in the kitchen, with a sliding glass door leading out to a deck that runs the full width of the house directly in front of you. To the left is the family room, which also has a sliding door out to the deck. The screens for both of these doors are on the inside.

Anyway, this cat had a habit of once or twice a day, he’d come tearing up the stairs, launch himself at the kitchen screen door, hang there briefly and jump down. He’d then run over to the family room, launch himself at the screen door in there, again hang there briefly and jump down, then it would all be over and he’d probably go straight to sleep. So one day, he went through this little ritual, the first screen door went as expected, and he ran over into the family room. Unfortunately for him, however, for some reason the second screen door had been slid over to one side and wasn’t in its normal position. The result: the cat throws himself at the spot where it should be, and goes THUNK into a glass door. The poor little critter sat there looking stunned for a moment, then proceeded to start washing, as if to say “I meant to do that”.

22

I have always been impressed with cats doing this whenever they botch something. A cat we had before (back when we let them out in the yard to play, back before we realized that’s how fleas get inside) would spend long stretches of time sneaking through the grass to catch a bird or a squirrel. Almost always this sneaking up would fail, most often just as the spring was inititated. The prey would just vanish. The cat would look around and then start licking itself as if the whole point to the sneaking up was to work up some good spit to clean with.

23

We had a smart/dumb cat that refused to eat unless the dishwasher had been opened.

Early on he realized that when the dishwasher was open, it meant someone was cleaning off the dishes, and a couple yummy scraps were going to be his. Nothing else was worthy of his notice.

Right after dinner time he sat perfectly still in stalking mode infront of the dishwasher. If there were no scraps, or we had eaten out, we had to open the dishwasher, pour only dry food into his bowl, and set it down. He would then eat it. Otherwise he would spend all night waiting for the magic food box to open wimpering pityfully.

24

Cuervo sleeps in the litter box.

Come on, that’s gotta be a winner.

25

And we thought our cats were dumb. They are little furry genuises compared to the cats in this thread. :stuck_out_tongue:

26

I have a coffee table. Metal frame, big 'ol round piece of glass on top. Now, the table is never cleared off - my laptop sits on it, there’s usually a couple of cups and coffee mugs, and often a plate or two, plus various bills/papers/etc.

My cat will come tearing into the room, run across the carpet, get right underneath the table, and jump up. And smash his head on the bottom of the glass. What. The. Hell. Cat? Did you think those glasses and papers were magically suspended in air? That you could jump through the dinner plate? Weirdo.

27

My not so bright cat likes ear wax, too. But he likes to get it for himself, waking me up in the process since when I’m asleep is the only time I’ll let him do this.

His really brilliant move resulted in the birdfeeder getting taken down. It was hung right outside a picture window. The smart cat enjoyed watching the birds and chattering her teeth at them. The dumb cat like to launch himself across the room head first into the window. Although it was sometimes amusing seeing him do this, it really didn’t do anything to encourage the birds to use the feeder.

28

Hijack alert!

Okay, what the hell IS this? My cat makes this weird clicking/chattering noise at moving things smaller than he is. If he sees, for example, another cat or a big bird or something, he’ll growl. But if it’s a spider or fly or whatever, he’ll click at it. None of my other cats have made this noise, but I hear lots of people mention that their cats do it… so what’s the deal?

/hijack

29

I had a cat through the end of middle school and most of high school that was absolutely gorgeous, but one of the dumbest pets I have ever seen in my life. Every time he entered a room for the first time, it was like a whole new experience for him. Eventually he figured out the layout of the house, but it sure took a while. This cat also liked to play-fight with the dogs. They’re Tibetan Spaniels, so they’re only a few pounds bigger than he was. However, his technique was a wee bit unorthodox. Instead of swiping with his front paws or pouncing, he would physically wrap his front legs around the dog’s neck and just kind of flop around. The intention appeared to be to drag the dog down, but it didn’t really work too well. Our dog Izzy would just kind of walk around looking perplexed as he dragged the cat across the floor. In fact, this cat would often just kind of fall over while in the midst of wrestling or playing with something. We’re pretty sure it was accidental, but he would keep fighting from the ground, as if he had meant to do it. Actually, now that I think about it, there was a period of time where he actually thought he was a dog. He spent all of his time with the dogs, playing with them, grooming them, running around with them. It was actually rather sad when he discovered that he was indeed a cat, as he then spent less time with them. Have you ever seen a dog licking a happily snoozing cat? They would get his head absolutely soaking wet with dog spit, and he would love every second of it.

Smokey (for that was the cat’s name) was also rather fond of sleeping in the fruitbowl on the table when he was small. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to realize that he had gotten bigger as he got older, and it got to the point that he was trying to lie in the bowl despite being much to large for it. He would be overflowing to the point of falling out of the bowl, but would still be lying in there, trying to get all cozy. Things got even more ridiculous when he decided that anything bowl-shaped was the perfect place to take a leak. The first target was the fruitbowl, but he then moved on to the bathroom sink. Yeah, that was pretty strange. It’s a good thing he was so adorable, because that was a weird cat.

30

That’s not dumb, that’s just efficient. :smiley:

It’s a little mean to make fun of my cat when he was senile (and as we found out, nursing a nice brain tumor), but he would lose his food dish. It was always in the same place, and always full of food, but he would walk around the house yowling pitifully until someone picked him up and carried him (often less than ten feet) to his food dish, and pushed his nose in it. He’d ponder the food for a moment, give me a “And just what the fuck am I supposed to do with this?” look, ponder the food a moment longer, then eat three little kernels and give up, seemingly exhausted by the whole process.

Another cat, who had lost the effective use of his back legs through three or four incidents involving cars, used to chase the neighbor’s dog (forty or fifty pound dog, not a little thing) around the neighborhood. Nothing was more pathetic than a cat, back legs dragging like a seal, scrabbling for traction because he’d been declawed, and getting chunks of his unwashed cat dreadlocks ripped out by bushes. Well, maybe the yipping dog was more pathetic, but still.

31

That is not fair. You took mine. My cat Fester did this, except she had carefully pulled out all the kleenex first. She also singed off her eyebrow-whiskers, but with a candle.

My cat Otto once got stuck in our neighbor’s box trap. He went in to eat the woilted piece of lettuce that was there to attract the grounghog. He got trapped in the box trap a second, third and fourth time. Same problem. He never seemed any less mystified.

32

:smiley: Probably not. Lady is cold all. the. time. Even in the summer, it seems. When she can’t find a lap to sit on and leech off a person’s body heat, she likes to sit on the heating vents. My guess is she figured that the fire would be a lot like that… stupid cat.

33

Oh pleease, all teencats sleep in the litter box! Max the younger does too.

34

Mine was a genius compared to the morons that some of you have, BUT she had a weekend routine that gave us endless <snerking.>

We would read the newspaper and place the various sections on the coffee table once we finished them. Some would stick straight out, overlapping the table. She would jump up onto the portions that overlapped, fall straight down, and with her dignity questioned, would walk away, tail straight up, as if this indignity had never occured.

Talk about morons, though. I had a large wooden jewelry box on a bookcase that was under a window in my bedroom. In the middle of the night she would jump on the bookcase, on to the jewelry box, and then on to the window sill. She woke me up every time she did this. I didn’t move the jewelry box; instead, I cursed her nightly.

35

Back several years ago, during my first marriage, we lived in an apartment and had a cat. This cat became pregnant (thanks to my ex who let her slip by our door AND the security door to the outside!) and had a litter of kittens. We determined not to name them as our intent was to give them away shortly after they weaned.

One evening, I was sitting on the sofa reading the newspaper and I noticed that our side-table lamp began to flicker. I tapped the bulb, tightened it, and it seemed fine… for a few minutes. Then, it began to flicker again. <SIGH>. I’m thinking those damn cats were rampaging all through the house earlier, I’ll be ont knocked the plug loose… the plug BEHIND the sofa.

So, I pull the sofa away from the wall to see that one of the kittens had bitten into the wire. Not only that, he was still LATCHED ON! I swooped my hand down to grab him and got quite a nice jolt myself since he still had juice pulsing through him. THEN I decided to unplug the lamp (just WHO is the stupid one in this picture, anyway?) and pick up the kitty. He looked like a cartoon! His fur was poofed straight out from his body. His tail was also straight and stood at a ninety-degree angle to his back.

After prying his mouth open and removing the cord, and some (I kid you not!) kitty CPR, he opened his eyes. Dazed, confused and barely able to squeak out a sound; I held him until he seemed to regain his composure. He could walk, shakily at first.

His brain seemed to take a real hit from that shock, though. He’d forgotten how to eat or drink. He literally put his face into the bowl of milk we gave him and blew bubbles with his nose… which was fine until he tried to breathe IN! <snort…gasp…choke!>
He didn’t run or play anymore. He didn’t bounce when startled, like his siblings did. He’d simply turn his head somewhat slowly toward the action and go along his way. And his tail never lost that “christmas-tree” look. It pointed straight at the ceiling and looked as if it had just been removed from the dryer and was charged with static electricity.

We called him Watt.

36

I’m not sure if he was stupid or just weird, but we had one cat who would sit at the side of the road and chase cars with the neighbor’s dogs.
He would also sit on a fence post and wait for one of the sheep to walk by, and leap on it and ride it around the field.

37

Awwww!!! I feel like a complete insensitive prick for laughing as hard as I did at that image, but I’m still laughing. Poor kitty!

-foxy

38

We had a cat once that we had to teach to meow.

It would squeak, but never meow. I worked with her for two months until she got it.

39

We had a cat names Peaches. Peaches became increasingly dumb and kind of strange. I am pretty sure I know the cause.

One day I was sitting in the den. The den had a pool table and a sliding glass door to the patio. I heard Peaches come running down the hall. She ran into the den, jumped on the pool table and launched herself towards the patio. The thing is, the sliding glass door was closed. She smacked head first into the sliding glass door about 3 feet off the ground. She fell straight down then wandered off. I went to check on her and she was pretty pissed about the whole thing. I saw her do this at least two other times.

This cat was the Evil Knievel of the feline world. Not only did she smash her head into the glass door on multiple occasions she #1) had all the hair ripped out of one side of her body when my Mom started the car and she happened to be sleeping in the engine compartment by the fan, #2 she got hit by THREE cars, #3 she came home all the time with various other injuries, a couple broken bones, a hole in her throat (you could see right in), etc. She was the most injured cat I have ever had.

As she got older she got kind of weird. She was still a loving cat but would freak at various noises and run into things at full speed.

We came to the conclusion that smacking her head into the glass door so many times lowered her kitty IQ by serveral thousand points.

Slee

40

In the context of this thread, the fuzzy black land shark living in my house is a freakin brain surgeon. Okay, not a brain surgeon, an opthalmalogist maybe. Anyway.

He’s not regularly stupid, he’s pretty sharp actually, but there’s one thing he does that’s either incredibly dumb or he’s deliberately trying to drive me crazy. He’s indoor/outdoor, with a cat flap on the basement door, but when he knows I’m inside, he meows at a door to be let in. Spoiled boy.

Okay, so, his favorite entrance/exit is the back door, which is visible from the windows in the kitchen, which itself has a door at the side of the house. (Got that?) So when I’m in the kitchen, I’ll hear him meowing to be let in, and I’ll look out the window, and see him sitting at the back door. The movement of me in the window will usually catch his eye, and he’ll look right at me, looking at him from the kitchen.

So I go over to the kitchen door, open it, and call his name. His response: Meow. Yes, I think, I know you hear me, now come over here, because this is the open door. Him: Meow.

I step out a bit further onto the kitchen porch, where I can look around the corner of the house and see him directly at the back door. “Come on, you dope,” I say, “the door here is open.”

Him, squinting into the sunshine: Meow.

In other words, either it’s “duh, I don’t get it,” or it’s “I don’t care that that door is open, I want you to open this door.” For several minutes.

Then he gives up, leaves the back door, walks toward me, and diverts down the basement steps to let himself in via the cat flap.

Dumb cat. Aw, c’mere and let me scratch you under the chin. Ooo boogy bumpkins. Yes you are.