They may have less developed brains than humans, but cats are far from being clueless animals. If you’re not convinced then you’ll find millions of videos on the Internet that prove just how smart, sly, and naughty these four-legged creatures are. They’re certainly intelligent enough to understand that they are very different from us humans, but what exactly do they see when they’re interacting with humans?
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Big cats
The truth of the matter is that we’re not entirely sure of the answer to this question as it is not yet possible to really understand a cat’s brain. However, there are several competing theories and a few of them are quite surprising. According to one of them, detailed in the book Cat Sense, cats see us as ‘stupid fat cats.’
Big, because are much larger than they are. And stupid, because apparently from their point of view we are neither capable of hunting mice on our own nor of using the litter box to relieve ourselves. What makes us stoop even lower in their eyes is the fact that we knowingly go to their litter box to dig up what they so carefully hid—their poo. It now makes sense why they treat us the way they do...
Crazy primates
Another theory suggests that cats are way smarter than we think and know that we are a completely different species to them.
This theory comes from an American veterinarian by the name of Tony Buffington. He claims that to them we are just monkeys that behave very strangely. Interviewed by Wired, the vet explains:
How on earth is your cat supposed to know that you're yelling at him because you want him to stop scratching the sofa? To the cat, you're this crazy primate who's attacking it for no reason.
This article has been translated from Gentside FR.
