Cat Intelligence

I spent three months figuring out what went wrong. I went to consult a professor who researched primate cognition, and she asked me one question: "Are you doing experiments on the cat's territory, or on your territory?" All my experiments had been conducted in the laboratory. The cats were brought to an unfamiliar environment, smelling disinfectant, with strangers watching them. Their lack of cooperation was completely normal.

I changed my approach. I started going to cat owners' homes to conduct experiments. I brought my equipment to their doors and tested cats in environments they were familiar with. I required owners to be present but not to intervene. I sat in front of each cat for 20 minutes first, doing nothing, letting them get used to my presence.

The results were different.

This time I tested 15 cats, and 11 completed the object permanence test. 6 cats demonstrated A-not-B error correction ability—meaning they could remember changes in object location and wouldn't stubbornly go to where they had previously found the treat. This ability doesn't appear in human infants until around 12 months of age.

I wrote up this finding as a paper and submitted it to the journal Animal Cognition. It was rejected. The reviewers said my sample size was too small and the experimental conditions weren't standardized enough (because every household's environment was different).

In 2011, I submitted again, adding more data, having tested a total of 43 cats. Rejected again. This time the reviewers said my methodology was flawed—experiments conducted in home environments couldn't control variables.

I was frustrated. I was doing something no one had done before, and the academic world was judging it by traditional standards. I had no laboratory, no team, no major funding. I only had myself, my equipment, and cat owners willing to let me through their doors.

I contacted a friend who did app development, and she helped me design an iPad app specifically for testing cat cognitive abilities. We spent six months developing it, then another three months testing and fixing bugs. In the summer of 2017, the app went live.

This time I no longer relied only on myself. I recruited cat owners online to participate in experiments. They downloaded the app, followed instructions to let their cats play the game, and data automatically uploaded to my server. In the first year, I collected data from over 400 cats.

The data revealed some interesting things. There was great individual variation in cats' cognitive abilities. Some cats learned the game rules after 10 attempts, while others were still randomly tapping after 100 tries. Age was a factor—cats between 3 and 6 years old performed best. Breed also had an influence—Siamese and Abyssinian cats had higher average scores than other breeds.

In 2018, I published my first paper, in a not very well-known journal. Citation count was low. I didn't expect overnight fame—this isn't that kind of story.

In 2019, I quit my veterinary job and became a full-time researcher. This was a risky decision. My wife had a stable income, and we had some savings—this meant our household income was cut in half. I was 48 years old, giving up a stable career to pursue research that might never yield results.

My wife supported me. She said, "If you don't do it now, you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

In 2020, the COVID pandemic broke out. Many things came to a halt, but my research actually accelerated. People were stuck at home, spending much more time with their cats. The number of cat owners participating in my experiments tripled. By the end of 2020, my database contained cognitive test data from over 1,200 cats.

This is currently the largest cat cognitive ability database in the world.

I'm now writing a book, planning to publish it next year. Not an academic monograph, but a book for general readers. About how cats think, what they can understand, what they remember, and how they see us.

I don't know if anyone will buy this book. I don't know if my research will be recognized by the academic world. What I do know is that I've spent 12 years doing one thing, and this thing gives me a reason to get up every morning.

I have three cats at home. One is named Peanut, an orange cat, 9 years old. One is named Black Bean, pure black, 5 years old. One is named Sesame, black and white, 3 years old. Peanut is the smartest of the three—he can open drawers to find treats. Black Bean is the dumbest, often walking into glass doors. Sesame is in the middle.