While they are known as the brainless introverts of the pets we keep, there may be more to cats than we give them credit for. Is it possible that because a cat can learn when it is time for treats or how to get a human’s attention for food, they are intelligent? Or are they unintelligent because they can’t seem to learn to stay off the kitchen table? Or are they just unwilling? Could it be possible that cats choose to learn tasks that offer reward and are only within their best interest? Maybe cats operate purely on instinct. Or is it curiosity? Well, while we are still not entirely sure about what motivates our feline friends, we do know a little bit about them.
We do know that a cat’s motivation to use the litter box is almost completely reliant on instinct. A cat has a certain instinct to cover up his wastes as to not be traced by a predator or competition. Lone feral cats were seen to cover their wastes without training. However, according to an article on petmeds.com, within a group of feral cats, the dominate cat leaves his waste uncovered as a way to mark his territory. Cats lower in the hierarchy will cover their leavings as a sign of subordination. Lucky for us cat owners, training a new kitten to use the litter box is a walk in the park.
Next, we know that cats each have their own personality (as though that wasn’t a given). Training a cat, which seems to require quite a bit of motivation, is based on what motivates the individual cat. Large cats in the wild do not expend more energy on catching prey than they gain eating it. So this may indicate that domestic house cats share this instinct. If this instinct drives motivation to learn, this could explain why cats appear unwilling to learn.
Perhaps it is difficult to train your cat to sit for a treat, but your cat willingly learns to signal you when you forget to fill up her bowl. She is expending more energy on learning to sit for the small morsel of food you’re offering than she is just meowing a few times at you for a full bowl. Maybe the cat isn’t so dumb after all, just a little more based on instinct than much else.
However, that’s not to say that cats don’t still have little wheels turning in their heads. According to hillspet.com, cats gain most of their motivation from finding the sources of their benefit. In other words, kitty will only find interest in sitting for that treat if she finds it benefits her continually. So cats' learning is thought to be based on a lot of instinct and a bit of personality. Each cat will decide what they will do and when, of course, based on what it will bring them. Sit for a treat? Maybe. Maybe not. To bring it down to the bone, cats are smart enough to learn routine and can learn and even train us. If she finds that meowing at you frantically gets you to fill up her bowl, then, you bet, she is going to keep doing it time after time, because it offers food.
According to ASPCA.org, cats even have distinctive meows they use for human communication. When cats are adults they don’t really meow at each other for communication. This behavior is only observed between a kitten and mother. To see just how accurate this was, I did a little observation of my own using my three cats. The only meowing from them was because they wanted food or wanted to bug humans for attention and petting. Never did they meow to each other for anything. Quite interesting.
Despite the fact that we know a bit about cats and what they are willing to do for us, based on what they give us, we still don’t know exactly how smart the cat is. We are sure, though, that the cat really just doesn’t care what we want. They want what they want and that’s it.
While, we humans, are very intelligent, we fail to see that when it comes to the measuring of intelligence, we tend to measure the animals’ intelligence based on how they can manipulate things similar to ourselves. We could just come to agree that we are biased and that the cat is perhaps more resourceful than we thought. If we think about it, cats have us feeding them, curing their ailments, and even have us creating things that keep them entertained. No creature really does that for us. Cats have us trained more than we thought. So maybe the cat is much more intelligent than we know, regardless of its ability to learn tasks based on what benefits us rather than themselves. Hmmm……how many times have you wished you had your cat’s laid back and easy life? Quite a few, I’m sure. Or at least I have.
