How clever/stupid is your pet?

Our cat is a good cat – friendly, chilled, playful, predictable – but not what I’d call clever. It will play with a ball of string but if the string rolls out of sight that’s it, game over. The cat flap I installed has never been used, despite the cat sitting on the mat and watching while I showed her how it works. Open…close…open…close. It just looked at me as if to say ‘OK, now what?’

Restore my faith in the pet world by telling me how smart your pet is – or how dumb it is

A colleague told me this morning that his cat had managed to lock itself into a suitcase last night – including somehow closing one of the catches from inside the suitcase…

My dog is as stupid as she looks

If there’s a doorway, she’ll lie in it.
She sits in the front porch for hours waiting for a cat to walk past. MrsDezb calls it her TV.

i found a mouse in the bath. my cat had left it there while it went off to do something else for a while.

My cat is well clever. Well, if recognising the sound of my bike pulling up and running out to meet me is clever !

We had a cat at home who figured out how to work the lock on a cat door, it would then close behind her and other not so clever cat would run face first in to it.

I look after my sister’s dog sometimes, a 3yr old springer.

That knows all it’s toys by name, you can ask it to fetch the ball or the rope or the frisbee or the duck (a soft toy duck) and it’ll do it. Occasionally she’ll get so enthusiastic that she brings the wrong toy but the look of mortification on her face when she realises is really something.

Contrast this with my late grandfather who had a west highland white terrier which was possibly the dumbest animal ever.

rama the cat:

quite bright, plays with the kids, retracts claws, chases stuff, drinks out of taps. cool.

charlie the cat:

thick.as.mince. was a stray, i suspect heavy substance abuse in previous life. Stupid is an understatement. But fluffy and lovely.

hugo the cat (deceased):

clever bastard. really clever. Used to visit all the houses behind us every morning. The neighbours called him chris evans cos he was fat, ginger and always turned up at breakfast. Skilled hunter. Once caught (and ate) a small seagull, a fish and a rat in the same day. And still wanted feeding. Used to bite the wife’s earlobes to wake her up in the morning. Also used to freak her out by sitting in front of her when she was trying to watch telly and put his head on one side whilst staring at her. ‘JUSTIN, JUSTIN, HE’S DOING IT AGAIN!!!!!’ Would stare out people he didn’t like and slowly turn round to reveal his arse when they blinked before walking away very slowly. When he got old and infirm and couldn’t use the catflap he’s do his business in the kid’s potty. Lived to the age of 22 and was a true king amongst moggies.

Tiggy (cat) – Thick as pig crap. I’ve watched her stand by a squeaking mouse and not be able to work out where it is. She doesn’t play with any toys, is always missing jumps, falls off things all the time because she doesn’t try and balance and still can’t work out that I put her food out the back door in the same place every single day.

Millie (cat) – Very smart. Awesome hunter, plays with toys constantly, can open doors that are shut and ajar, good at working out how to get to food she can see but not reach. Very sneaky, Nastily sneaky. Knows to wait hidden by doors so she can sneak in as we open it without us seeing her.

Ruby (dog) – Pretty bright. She knows to bring toys, bowls and leads to us to tell us what she wants. Can work out where the cats are hiding. She struggles with doors. Even if she watches millie open a door that’s ajar with her paw, she’ll still not copy it. Knows when to turn cute mode on.

Edit: I rememberd something else Tiggy does. We used to have a cat flap on the back door. Then we replaced it with some sliding glass doors and a conservatory. What do you think Tiggy does when she wants to leave the house quickly? That’s right, she runs straight into the door…. Three years after it was replaced.

Dogs.. very stupid.. Cat.. very clever

Ooh yeah, as crazy-legs mentioned. Ruby will fetch the toy you tell her too. So ‘ball’ ‘wuba’ and ‘bone’ will all result in her fetching the right one. She will sit, stay and come on command too. The cats won’t.

This one is both…

Very smart,

but sooo excitable that she’s utterly stupid

But, very, very lovable

Also, absolutely impossible to photograph – never keeps still long enough

I have an 8 month old Maine Coon who is obsessed with water. Came home a few weeks ago to find all the taps running. Thought I had a Poltergoost until I saw him turning them on to drink out of them

yossarian: hugo sounds like he was a proppa cat

Our kitten, Che Guevara, is absolutely barking. Its like a Tasmanian devil. He’s never still. Madder than a box of frogs!

We recently returned from work to find a scene of devastation. And what was previously a black and white cat, now conspicuously all black. Hmmmmmm – whats happened here then?

It must have heard some birds on the roof, and decided the best way to get to them was up the chimney. So in trying, and failing (obviously) to get up there, he dislodged a huge amount of soot, which was now liberally strewn all over the front room. This clearly not being quite messy enough, he then decided to run around the house, covered in soot.

Have you ever seen a mainly white kitchen a soot-covered kitten has been running around in all day? I prey you never have too!

Apparently its our fault for giving it such a militant name

Oh… and he chases the washing as it spins round in the washing machine. He’s not very bright

clever bastard. really clever. Used to visit all the houses behind us every morning. The neighbours called him chris evans cos he was fat, ginger and always turned up at breakfast. Skilled hunter. Once caught (and ate) a small seagull, a fish and a rat in the same day. And still wanted feeding. Used to bite the wife’s earlobes to wake her up in the morning. Also used to freak her out by sitting in front of her when she was trying to watch telly and put his head on one side whilst staring at her. ‘JUSTIN, JUSTIN, HE’S DOING IT AGAIN!!!!!’ Would stare out people he didn’t like and slowly turn round to reveal his arse when they blinked before walking away very slowly. When he got old and infirm and couldn’t use the catflap he’s do his business in the kid’s potty. Lived to the age of 22 and was a true king amongst moggies.

That’s the sort of thing that will have devout atheists believing in reincarnation

Never saw it myself, but one of my uncle’s previous dogs was trained so he would only shit down drain covers

Never saw it myself, but one of my uncle’s previous dogs was trained so he would only shit down drain covers

My parents brought me up that way.

Our cats are geniuses – they do nothing but sleep all day, but have somehow managed to train us to wait on them hand and foot 24/7!

My dog(4 yr old Boxer)is very clever,he refuses to do anything unless there is food involved & even then he’ll make sure it’s a simple task …..

Would stare out people he didn’t like and slowly turn round to reveal his arse when they blinked before walking away very slowly

Priceless! 😆

Our cat (haribo), is a sneaky little git! He scratches / chews things that get me or the lady out of bed. For example, he will chew the power cable on the laptop or scratch my bag if he want me to get out of bed, or he will scratch her furniture (or hump her teddy) to get her out of bed.

Git! But we love him.

Dogs have owners, cats have servants

Witnessed one of our cats trip over a pencil and bang it’s chin on the living room floor once. The wife and I couldn’t believe our eyes.

Mind boggling dozy… but lives forever.

Cant find the photo so you’ll get the drawing.

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STW Art Club – Victor[/url] by SGMTB[/url], on Flickr

Mind you he’s quite good at escaping his adventure area. Might change his name to Steve McQueen.

I know horses that have learnt to stand on the hose to avoid being washed…

A bit thick…

But not daft…

Nemo my rotty was very clever… only made it to 10 though.

he knew his toys by name, would fetch the post, never quite got hang of the slippers thing as he would only ever bring me 1 and then go off to do something else, used to sing the tune when the ice-cream man came down the road (prolly cos when he did he got a ice cream) would push you one the swings in the park, would walk patiently on a lead with my 2 year old nephew at the controls, and loads of other stuff that surprised me.

Loved that doggy 🙂

My EBT thinks he’s a chihuahua. The size of the gap he wants to fit through is inversely proportional to the speed at which he’ll hit it. Sometimes a person forms one of the edges of that gap. Sometimes a person ends up lying on the floor wondering what the hell has just happened. Very funny to watch though. 😀

double post somehow…

used to sing the tune when the ice-cream man came down the road

A singing Rottweiler?

Nelson, my sister’s dog that I fostered for a while, was clever enough to act stupid 🙂

Nelson’s brill, I’d quite like him back 🙁

I once watched Bianchi, my cat go over to my son (who was asleep), tap his hand while watching his face to see if he was asleep, then do the same again and when she was sure he was asleep, she cuddled up with him.

She also stands up and knocks (taps) at the back door when she wants to get in (she prefers that to going through the cat flap).

Ted (ESS) is pretty bright. Knows his toys by name (well, a fixed class of toy, e.g. @ball@ means _a_ tennis ball) and is trained enough to respond to whistle calls and hand genstures at distance. However, show him two tennis balls and he will be stuck for hours trying to get both back to you. The look on his face as we dumped a large pack of Tesco value tennis balls in the hall was priceless. He was in heaven.

Ralph (Cocker) is loveable, but a bit stupid. Doesn’t retrieve, doesn’t fetch, but knows that if he acts cute and cuddly, someone will make a fuss of him. Maybe he’s clever. Hmmmm.

First Staffy Caeser thich as a brick, second Staffy Badger crazy smart.

A mates dog has just become afraid of the moon if he can see it in the day time, really odd behavior Woody just legs it home if he sees it.

The look I get from my cat after stuffing him through the cat flap is pretty much the same look I might give you if I managed to walk through a brick wall. He’s not the brightest animal in the world.

… The look on his face as we dumped a large pack of Tesco value tennis balls in the hall was priceless. He was in heaven.

I have got try that! Our dog is fascinated with tennis balls, think it was from the training.

I didn’t hold out much hope of her being a trail dog..
Put me on a bike and I turn invisible to the dog! I could call her all I wanted, she would not see me, step off the bike and she see’s me. With a bit of training, she is now a pretty good trail dog.

Noow cats are supposed to be nimble and things. My cat would knock everything over, you could tell where he had been from what was knocked over. His favourite trick was to paw out all the water from his bowl then skate around the floor.

Not very…they will run about like idiots when I’ve got their food bowl, and usually end up head-butting each other and running straight into my legs. I put the food down in the same place twice a day, but unless it happens to be directly in front of their faces, they just don’t notice, and will keep running about my legs as I leave the room. Same with veg, I have to literally rub their noses in it otherwise they miss it.

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Yes, she knows the ‘stand on the hosepipe’ trick, fortunately we are wise to it so she still got washed. She was not impressed, despite it being a really hot day 🙂 She’d already broken one rope and tried to go back to her field, which is why she is restrained in a head collar and bit…

The cat we had when I was a kid would drag her paw down the venetian blind
to wake my folks and be let out. She would also flick the letterbox cover so we’d
answer the door and let her in.

This is Numpty, despite the name he’s pretty smart but prefers to use brawn over brain.

This is Moog. No idea what goes on in her head.

My pug’s pretty smart – for a pug. “Bring your toy” will prompt her to go and gather a (any) toy and bring it to your feet, but she either has really poor eyesight or is a bit dim: if she sees someone pulling a suitcase she’ll bark at it, confident that it’s a dog and hence will bark back.