Cats - How intelligent are they?

For those of you who have a cat or have had one in the past, you probably know they are very intelligent animals. Just how intelligent are they though? Do you think cats can predict stuff like "death"?

I saw a story on the news awhile ago about a cat named Oscar who lives at a nursing home and seems to be able to tell when someone is going to die. Sounds weird and a bit scary but they say it has happened nearly 25 or so times.

Here's a link to an article about this story online:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/25/death. ... index.html

So, what do you think about this subject? Maybe the Egyptians who seemed to treasure and honor cats knew something that we didn't about them.

I have no doubt that cats can predict some things like extreme weather shifts or that they can decipher the moods of the people around them. I've personally seen such things, so I know they can do this sort of stuff.

Oscar is kind of spooky, though. That's really taking things to the extreme and a more supernatural quality to it.

That is creepy... very very creepy... I will never think of cats the same.

But the egyptain subject has me thinking now...

I'm pretty sure Egyptians originally "worshiped" cats because they helped with vermin problems so they could get a good harvest..

Divine Dragon wrote:

I'm pretty sure Egyptians originally "worshiped" cats because they helped with vermin problems so they could get a good harvest..

My thoughts exactly.

I thought there was a study done about 50 years ago that animals could tell when they or someone was dying. I remember reading a short story in 8th Grade by Jack London, (I think,) about a guy dying from hypothermia, and his dog knowing it in the last hours, and then abandoning the man so that it could save itself. In fact, I've heard of several cases where people that were lucid at their end would tell others that they knew they were dying.

As for the cat that likes dying people, it happened, therefore, it's explainable. It probably likes to comfort people that are about to go.

I believe in that sort of sixth sense. I remember my old dog howling quite suddenly once (and he never howled ever in his life, or afterwards) and we got a phone shortly after with the news of a family death.

I use to have a lizard that would go mad a minute before a earthquake would happen.

It seems to me, animals have something that we have lost over time.

The Lizard, I'm sure that is because they can just feel the vibrations from further down into the ground.. Or.. something.. A defence mechanism against predators..At least that's what I would think..


As for a sixth sense.. well.. that's nothing special, we have far more than six senses... it's around twenty or so..

Example, our sense of heat.. We can tell that one thing is hotter or cooler than another..
If we close our eyes and hold out a hand.. we can always find that held out hand with our other hand.. straight away.

"Sense of heat" would just be another form of our sense of touch. We feel the warmth or coldness of an object, but those things are really just a matter of the excited state of the atoms in the air around the object. Hot objects have atoms that are moving more quickly (more excited) and that causes the atoms in the air around them to become more excited. Those atoms then brush our skin, giving us a perception of heat.

As for this cat... well, there's no telling why he's doing that. He may be comforting the people, or like the doctor in the article said, he may just be looking for a heated blanket. Careful observation is needed. I wouldn't do it, though. I don't want that cat curling up next to me!

There are only five senses, as Neithird delimited. Types of sensations are all classified within those five, be it animal or human. Animals simply have more acute or less acute versions of those five senses. A "sixth" sense about another person's death is a complete absurdity.

Since a person that claims this sense admits no prior knowledge of the death, they are stating they "feel" it, which means they have a brain that was connected to the brain of the dead person, therefore invalidating both the concept of consciousness and the concept of the individual by declaring abstract thoughts to be floating around in some mystic realm that only they can tap into.

Tribal witch doctors have been citing such assertions for millenia. There is no such thing as a collective thought, let alone a collective brain. Notice these "psychics" never talk about being able to feel what is in someone else's stomach. A collective digestion is no more insane than a collective brain.

This reminds me of a dog I've seen on Animal Planet that detected his owner's heart attack moments before it happened. The dog also saved the life of the man's co-worker when he was about to have a heart attack, too.

I believe that perhaps animals who can predict these things can sense the changes in the human body. As there's symptoms of a heart attack which one can recognise, I'm sure that they could be detectable by animals, too. I wouldn't call it some 6th sense, though.