I, for one, welcome our new feline overlords.
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At least three of our six cats will reliably come when they’re called by name.
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Again, obeying obtuse hairless apes is not a sign of intelligence.
Owls don’t cohabitate in human built structures for warmth, food and scritches. Owls are wild animals. Felis catus are not.
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They have provided research for the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop…
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I remain agnostic on the matter of how intelligent they are. I’m just sayin’ the relationship between humans and dogs is fundamentally different between the relationship between humans and cats.
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Well of course. I’m merely questioning the criteria by which these studies measure intelligence, a little tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely since it really is a human-centric criteria.
Our home includes both a dog and two cats, and I’ve appreciated both species all my life.
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And libraries
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Good point. Europe really lost the plot in the middle ages and paid a steep price. They should have paid closer attention to the classics. 
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Not entirely clear who they were protecting the books from.
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Mine also responds to tone. If you say her name nicely, she will look at you and come when called a second time. If you are stern, she drops her shoulders and runs away.
The other cat, well…she’s close to being profoundly deaf and you have to appear in her field of vision.
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Cats responding to their name or commands depends on the personality of the cat, i’d say most cats likely wouldn’t care. Mine loves attention so calling him usually ends in him coming over, the few times he ignores me is when he’s really interested in something. And i haven’t bothered training him to respond to commands but i do think he’s motivated enough that its possible.
Also i’m not sure what the title of the BB post is trying to do. Is it trolling? I wouldn’t say that its fair to say that cats are stupid, the measure for their intelligence is set to arbitrary standards by humans. I don’t think they’re the smartest but certainly not dumb by any stretch of the imagination. If anything cats are doing just fine, they did domesticate us so… just saying. Seems smart to me.
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Judging a cat’s intelligence by measuring its response to a name given to it by a human seems perilously close to the apocryphal “if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree” metric of measuring a creature’s smarts.
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My first cat was a very clever stray, probably from when someone moved. It learned its new name and would come when called. When it wanted to go outside or come inside, it would wait by the back door until you noticed and accommodated it. When it wanted to sit on the furniture, it would sit at your feet until you patted a spot beside you and gave it permission to jump up and sit.
My second cat was a shelter rescue, and a terror. Could not have been less disposed to domestic life. Should have been in a Roman arena somewhere, trying to eat past-life Marv. But very clever. The shelter named him Harvard and the vet nick-named him Houdini, both for his capacity to outsmart humans and open cages. (He also stood on his back feet and tried to used his two front paws to turn the front door knob, but only successfully twice.)
My current cat is by no means the smartest, but more than capable of picking up her ears when her name is spoken. (Also female pronouns like “she” and “her”, which for years only referred to her, mostly in an attempt to catch her off guard when we were talking about taking her to the V-E-T. Yes, she also recognized the word vet clearly.)
So the take-away from studies like this: cat-owners probably have said their cats are smart. These researchers are probably not cat people, and probably doubt the intelligence of the cat-owners as much as the cats.
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Naturally, though i would’ve pegged Rob as a cat person 
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