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Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

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Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#121

Post by godelski »

Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #102
herodotus wrote: post #21

I have tried to train my two cats with just these words: 1. "Let's go" - morning meal 2. "Upstairs" - I am going to bed 3. "Dinner" (plus clink bowls together) - evening meal 4. "Lie Down" and their names. Emerald, who prefers being upstairs, definitely responds to "Upstairs": she charges upstairs when I say it. Jade remains enigmatic and skeptical: that seems to be her nature. But if she is in the mood for a tummy r…

> Jade remains enigmatic and skeptical: that seems to be her nature. Its been shown in the past (not got the links to hand, and cba to google right now, but I'm sure they wont be hard to find) that cats know their name, its just often they don't give a shit when you call them. Which pretty much any cat servant will understand. Wouldn't be surprised that also applies to other words/commands. EDIT: My own cat knows her…

That's weird, my cat will come no matter what name I call her as long as I use the same intonations. I'm not convinced she knows her name but rather that she knows pitches. Similarly my cat won't do tricks without the hand gestures despite me always using the same commands. Maybe my cat is just dumb or stubborn, or both. I have seen her run head first into a wall before.

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#122

Post by zabzonk »

Cats understand doors (particulary fridge doors (with food inside), or doors where it will be nice and warm) and will often paw them. And will go mental when you come back go mental when you go out for a fish supper (this is in Scotland).

Otherwise, they just look at you as if you have the IQ of a wombat.

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#123

Post by AlotOfReading »

bitwize wrote: post #41
News-Dog wrote: post #16

A friend of mine tooking in a cat that had been owned by a deaf family. This cat didn't make any noise (meow) at all, if she wanted to go out, etc., she would run between you legs, (yes, totally under-foot!) a major trip hazard. I taught her how to vocalize very quickly, which she understood we would hear, and would respond too.

Grown cats don't meow to each other. It's a noise they make to get our attention. Each cat must figure out, on their own, that meowing works to get humans' attention. A cat with deaf human parents would have never learned this, or would have learned that meowing doesn't work and to try something else.

Cats definitely meow to each other. For adults it's typically an aggressive warning, but it happens.

It's also worth noting that kittens and their mothers communicate heavily via meows even when no humans are present. Food-begging is a pretty straightforward association from there.

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#124

Post by kaba0 »

personlurking wrote: post #34
nerdjon wrote: post #5

I am both surprised and not surprised by this. It does kinda make sense, I have 2 cats (from the same litter and have been together their entire lives. 14 yo now). They each clearly respond to their name and not their brothers name. Or at least respond differently, but I have noticed they look up sometimes if I call one and not the other (but won't run up to me). I have long though it was them responding to the "pet…

The other day on Reddit [1] there was a video of farm animals reacting to their names, but I think it's just responding to the "pet voice", or rather to their food provider vocalizing in their direction. 1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/uq5yjo/animal...

I think this is true for some of the pets (e.g. many birds are quite dumb), but pigs are one of the most intelligent mammals, and cows are not dumb either.

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#125

Post by jonahbenton »

Would be interested in studies- in cats and others- that attempt to differentiate the processing that occurs in response to human utterance, as "words" as we understand them are an abstraction that elide many subtle aspects of communication. Pitch, tone, vocalization duration and speed, mouth position, etc. So many signals there, some of which may be relevant for cats, some not.

Am sure cats are able to distinguish bird types by their voices, and other prey as well, to a much more sophisticated degree than we (our ears) can. Calling those vocalizations "words" almost certainly wrong.

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#126

Post by kaba0 »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #104
smcl wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof yeah that is something I only heard of as an adult - a friend's dad apparently did it a couple of times. Gruesome

Probably says a lot about how much brutality we've engineered out of daily living. I recall having a visceral reaction to hearing about the kittens as a child, and I imagine it's fairly natural to feel that way. I'm glad I lived in a time and place where that kind of desensitization wasn't necessary.

Unfortunately it is still fairly common in small villages (in Hungary at least - which is quite poor outside of its capital). Spaying is expensive and cats do produce plenty of offsprings, and it is not even like with dogs that you can just keep inside the backyard..

(Though what I heard about is not drowning, but slamming them hard to something :/)

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#127

Post by nonstickcoating »

goodpoint wrote: post #44
devmor wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In nature, cats form colonies where they take communal care of the young, old and infirm. One of the core behaviors of cats is hunting and providing for colony members who are too weak to do so. Cats being "solitary" animals is largely a misunderstanding of cat behavior towards humans due to cat affection being expressed differently than dog affection.

Many species are more social and cooperative that people think. I wonder if seeing nature as more ferocious, competitive and individualistic that it really is comes from psychological projection.

I recommend Kropotkin's book about Mutual Aid regarding this topic. Disregarding his obvious political affiliation he is one of the first critics of the then-emerging social-darwinist readings of animal behaviour with regards to Evolution and therefore deals with this topic quite extensively.

He was a zoologist apart from all the other topics he had time to deal in because of his noble heritage. Here is the wikipedia article [0] since I do not know how HN regards links to e.g. libgen.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#128

Post by manachar »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #120
Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Jade remains enigmatic and skeptical: that seems to be her nature. Its been shown in the past (not got the links to hand, and cba to google right now, but I'm sure they wont be hard to find) that cats know their name, its just often they don't give a shit when you call them. Which pretty much any cat servant will understand. Wouldn't be surprised that also applies to other words/commands. EDIT: My own cat knows her…

Cats destroy the assumption that animals should do what we tell them to, because that's how it works. Of course they have agency and their own goals. It's fascinating that humans are surprised and sometimes baffled by this.

Humans are regularly surprised to discover that the preponderance of evidence strongly suggests the universe was not created exclusively for themselves.

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#129

Post by poisonarena »

herodotus wrote: post #21

I have tried to train my two cats with just these words: 1. "Let's go" - morning meal 2. "Upstairs" - I am going to bed 3. "Dinner" (plus clink bowls together) - evening meal 4. "Lie Down" and their names. Emerald, who prefers being upstairs, definitely responds to "Upstairs": she charges upstairs when I say it. Jade remains enigmatic and skeptical: that seems to be her nature. But if she is in the mood for a tummy r…

I feel skeptical, I think cats and also most dog breeds understand only pitches that sound excited, because that means walk or tummy rub or food, but the actual said words could be anything, every time

Re: Cats learn the names of their friend cats in their daily lives

#130

Post by [deleted] »

herodotus wrote: post #21

I have tried to train my two cats with just these words: 1. "Let's go" - morning meal 2. "Upstairs" - I am going to bed 3. "Dinner" (plus clink bowls together) - evening meal 4. "Lie Down" and their names. Emerald, who prefers being upstairs, definitely responds to "Upstairs": she charges upstairs when I say it. Jade remains enigmatic and skeptical: that seems to be her nature. But if she is in the mood for a tummy r…

[deleted]
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