What are they thinking?
Miklósi, I was surprised to learn, had also conducted the pointing test with felines. Like Agrillo, he had a hard time getting cats to cooperate in his laboratory—so he went to their homes instead. Even then, most of the animals weren’t interested in advancing science; according to Miklósi’s research paper, seven of the initial 26 test subjects “dropped out.” But those that did participate performed nearly as well as dogs had. Cats too, it appears, may have a rudimentary theory of mind.
But when Miklósi took the study a step further, he spotted an intriguing difference between cats and dogs. This time, he and his colleagues created two puzzles: one solvable, the other impossible. In the solvable puzzle, the researchers placed food in a bowl and stuck it under a stool. Dogs and cats had to find the bowl and pull it out to eat. Both aced the test. Then the scientist rigged the exam. They again placed the bowl under a stool, but this time they tied it to the stool legs so that it could not be pulled out. The dogs pawed at the bowl for a few seconds and then gave up, gazing up at their owners as if asking for help. The cats, on the other hand, rarely looked at their owners; they just kept trying to get the food.
Now before you conclude that cats are dumber than dogs because they’re not smart enough to realize when a task is impossible, consider this: Dogs have lived with us for as many as 30,000 years—20,000 years longer than cats. More than any other animal on the planet, dogs are tuned in to the “human radio frequency”—the broadcast of our feelings and desires. Indeed, we may be the only station dogs listen to. Cats, on the other hand, can tune us in if they want to (that’s why they pass the pointing test as well as dogs), but they don’t hang on our every word like dogs do. They’re surfing other channels on the dial. And that’s ultimately what makes them so hard to study. Cats, as any owner knows, are highly intelligent beings. But to science, their minds may forever be a black box.
As another recent study showed, cats recognize our voices. They just don’t care.
Speaking as someone who has had a cat around for most of the last 40 years, dogs may be truly domesticated, but a cat is looking at you wondering how you would taste with ketchup.
Also, the best description I have ever heard about the difference between cats and dogs was made by Rush Limbaugh: “Dogs have masters, Cat’s have staff.” I can’t refute that. Not after having lived with these miniature tigers most of my life…
Don’t be ridiculous. Cats don’t like catsup. It would ruin dinner.
“As another recent study showed, cats recognize our voices. They just don’t care.”
Women recognize our voices, too. They also don’t care.
They just don’t care.
Until they want something. Am I talking about cats or wives?
My cat Kira doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of pointing. If I point at something, she looks at my finger instead.
She’s devised 101 different ways to wake me up in the morning for breakfast, however.
That’s exactly right. It takes the poor cat numerous tries, with 101 variations, to get us humans to do something as simple as opening a door or a can. Yet cats are deemed stupid because they don’t immediately jump to a command. Well, humans don’t immediately respond to commands either. In this regard, cats are much more like humans than are dogs. Dogs respond like robots. Cats respond like humans.
On the subject of dog vs. cat here is something that my cat once did that I thought was an interesting behavior. One evening, a rat (it was actually a pretty nice looking animal) walking along a handrail on a deck outside a sliding glass door caught my cat’s and my attention at the same time. After a double take, where we looked at each other and thought, “What the…” (at least that’s what I thought), without hesitation she headed, not for the glass door, but for her cat door which was 180 degrees and thirty feet the other way. In other words, she knew that to get to the rat, she first needed to run in the opposite direction. I believe a dog would have gone straight for the rat only to be stopped by the glass door.
Now this is an experiment that can easily be done. Just substitute food for the rat and a screen for the glass door (so the animals can smell the food) and see what happens. If the dog goes straight and the cat goes around, that would be a profound difference.
There’s a web comic, Girl Genius, about mad scientists. A character in it is Krosp, the King of Cats. He’s a genetically engineered intelligent cat, and he _is_ the king of cats. They’ll do whatever he tells them…until their attention wanders, so you can’t really form an army of cats.