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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grand_sealink
2009-06-19 05:42 pm UTC (link)

My Jack is the youngest of my clowder, but has similar reasoning powers. I tell the bf that Jack is a scientist who is constantly testing to see if gravity is still working by knocking shit off onto the floor.

Jack knows that sliding doors slide and will put his claws in the sliding screen and jerk his paws to open it.
He knows that catnip is green, but being an indoor cat, has little exposure to leafage other than the leaves I bring in from the plant outside. He will run into the kitchen if he hears lettuce being torn up for a salad and demand a small bit to make sure he isn't being left out of a leaf.
He will meow several times outside our door (bf has cat allergies but bravely lives with a cat lady), and that often does not work. When it does, he reaches under the door and plays with the spring doorstop, which makes a loud spring noise and gets results.
He knows that he's not supposed to roughhouse with my old cat and will wait until I am out of the room to try it.
He likes to have his food container always have food in it so you can't see the bottom. So for him, a food container is never empty. He knows that we eat out of food containers that are different from his(an old breadpan), but are similar to the food scoop (a plastic cup). When his food is running low, he goes around knocking any cups he can find over and looting the spoils. This has the added effect of training humans to a) put dishes in the sink and b) fill the food dish before bed. Even if he doesn't net any food, he often gets water or an ice cube, which is fun to bat around the kitchen.

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