I would often tell my boyfriend that my cat, Butter (short for Butterscotch), could understand everything we said. One evening Butter was curled up asleep on my lap. My boyfriend and I were talking and watching television. Again, we discussed about Butter’s ability to understand us. Tom, my boyfriend, rather smugly said he was going to test Butter. He did not use Butter’s name.

“Cat, if you can understand me, look at me now,” he said. Butter was curled up asleep, but he lifted his head, turned his head around to look straight at Tom as if to say, “WHAT?!” My boyfriend's lower jaw fell all the way to the floor, and frankly I was surprised too. I was rather smug myself when I said, “I told you so!”

Sorry I didn't answer the original question!

There are a couple of events that come to mind that show my cat problem-solves and develops strategies.

I feed my cat, Freya, on a small paper plate her canned cat food; when she eats it, because her tongue licks the food up, the plate slides across the floor. She would have to follow it around as it moved which irritated her. Instead of continuing to follow it, she simply puts her paw on the edge of the plate and that keeps it from moving. Okay, this is not earth-shattering, but I think it shows she had a problem and thought of a strategy to solve

The other time I can think of is when she irritates me. I was taking a nap on the couch and she wanted me to get up and feed her which I was not going to do. I pretended to be asleep and watched her. I have a tray on my coffee table in front of the couch where I keep various objects so they don't clutter up the table or get lost. For example, I had my reading glasses in the sleeve; a small metal pocket flashlight; the television remote; a black pen and some loose change. I saw her look down at the objects in the tray trying to decide which one would make the most noise; I saw her look at each object and I could see her calculating how much noise each one made that would get me up. Finally, she decided and started to make a lot of noise using the pen, probably based on past experience. Well it worked ! I got up and fed her. To me, this showed Freya used her past experience, calculating and decision making to have the best object for the job. She had to predict in her mind, knowing the noise each one makes, which one would wake me. In other words, she had to figure out the outcome using each one. Once again, Freya surprised me.