Scientists have always had great difficulty assessing the intelligence of the domestic cat (Felis cattus). This is because all standard tests for animal intelligence require the subject to cooperate with the experimenter. For example, if a mouse is placed in a maze, it will explore the maze until it finds a way out, whereas if a cat is placed in a maze, it will simply sit there mewing until the experimenter lets it out. This leads to considerable debate as to whether the cat is less intelligent than the mouse, or more so. Experiments in which a cat and a mouse competed directly to solve the maze produced inconclusive results and were halted by the ethics review board.
Of particular interest is the linguistic ability of cats. It is known that felines use mewing to communicate with their humans, and many cat hosts have reported the ability to distinguish such utterances as:
However, the question remains as to what extent cats can understand human language.
In this study, several volunteers, each of whom was owned by a cat, tested their cat’s ability to comprehend human language by presenting them with the utterance, “It’s half an hour to go until lunchtime.”
In all instances, the volunteers reported that the cat understood exactly one word.