Pet intelligence wank
The Guardian: Cats outsmarted in psychologist's test.

You can imagine how well this goes with the readers. Besides the predictable flood of pet owner butthurt and anecdotes of clever / stupid cats / dogs / mice / owls, there are plenty of genuinely funny comments as well as a side wank on the validity of test methods and statistics, obligatory calls to talk about world hunger instead or discuss the intelligence of various nationalities, and, naturally, Hitler and his pets make a bonus appearance. I think one could play classical wank bingo in here, but some of the stories make it all worthwhile.

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portkey
2009-06-19 04:53 am UTC (link)

I only have one great cat story, and it's more of a "you had to be there" thing, but..

One day I was in the house alone, sitting at my computer, when I suddenly heard my oldest, fattest cat Buddy running frantically on the floor above me. I estimate he started in the bathroom. He ran down the hallway upstairs, down the staircase, through the front hall, then skittered along the linoleum of the kitchen as he tried to make the turn for the dining room, where I was. I looked up as he rounded the corner to see him run straight across the room and attempt to jump atop a built-in chest of drawers.

He didn't make it. He hit the heavy wood with his face, rebounding backward several inches. However, in midair he pulled one of those acrobatic manoeuvres cats are capable of, contorting his entire body so that he ended up making a perfect backflip, landing on his stomach.

Then he calmly turned around and left the room the way he came in.

(I can only assume that he saw a bird or something through the bathroom window in the hedge on that side of the house, and he had in it mind to get down to 'sea-level' and attack through the dining room window..)

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zara_zero
2009-06-19 11:14 am UTC (link)

That reminds me of something that happened with my flatmate's enormous black cat, who isn't the brightest bulb.

My flatmate and I were in the kitchen one night when he strolls in, sits up on his hind legs and gets a good, long look at the kitchen window, then leaps face first into the glass.

That window is almost never opened so I'm not sure why he thought that was a good idea. And since it was nighttime and we had the inside light on, you'd think he could see his reflection (or ours) but... yeah.

He can open doors though, because he's so heavy. He likes to walk down the hallway on cold mornings, opening everybody's bedroom doors while they're sleeping and letting all the cold hall air in. My little cat can see how he does it but she's too light, so she just stands there batting the handle with her paws and meowing at me frantically in frustration.

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