Comments on: Can Cats Count?

By: dave

dave — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 23:43:46 +0000

Nice! Thanks for your comment, Sarabee.

By: Sarabee

Sarabee — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 23:39:00 +0000

I’m not sure if this counts, but I used to throw kibble treats every day around the room for my cat. I would throw one, and immediately my cat would run after it and eat it. I would wait till he was done and throw another. Sometimes I would be in a hurry and throw out five or so in succession, and he would run after the first one and be kind of lost about the other four. He would sniff all over the room and eventually find them. After about a year or so of doing this, one day he just decided he was going to wait by my side and watch where I threw all five before he got up and went to eat them. I could literally see his little brain keeping tabs on where each kibble landed and going to each spot as he remembered them. Amazing animals!

By: dave

dave — Sat, 10 Oct 2015 18:57:45 +0000

Thanks Jaimes! Good luck with your “research”

By: Jaimes R.

Jaimes R. — Fri, 09 Oct 2015 23:09:19 +0000

This is really interesting. The post and the comments. I came across this because I was looking for specific research on if cats can count. 1 of our cats seems to, which is really interesting to me. I’ve had cats all my life, and while I guess I’ve run “experiments” before, they were things I thought was laughable. Like the fact that light colored cats tend to gravitate to darker colored things to lay on, and dark cats do the opposite.

Anyway, we have a 7-month-old that we’ve had since birth (we fostered his mom and siblings). He spends most of his time in my daughter’s room or the living room, so I started giving him treats every time he comes to visit me. He’s been sick, so he lost weight, and I decided to give him more treats since he needs the fat (especially since we live in Upper Michigan, and winter is definitely coming. So we’re talking 15 treats on average at a time (a ridiculous number I wouldn’t give another cat). But he keeps track of the treats he drops while eating. He’s up in my lap when I give them to him. He knows exactly how many he drops. If he only finds four and he dropped five, he will fuss at me until I produce the missing one. If he drops 2 and finds none, I can’t just give him one. He wants both, and will not leave until at least the number dropped are produced. If I hadn’t been feeding him a ridiculous number of treats, I never would have discovered this. I’m going to try to increase the number dropped by putting more on the edge of my hand. I’ll see how far he can count, but he has confirmed he can count to at least 6 so far.

Let’s just hope I can finish this “research” before he gains his weight back. I’m also interested to see if our elderly cat (18 years) could count. She could also use a little more weight. To test our other two adults (10 years and 7 years), we’d have to find low cal treats they like. But this is highly fascinating to me.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 10:04:30 +0000

My cat did something interesting today, which made me wonder if he count to 3 but not four. He was patting me on the leg for my attention. I was busy so when he patted me I just patted him back. He patted me, I patted him, He patted me, I patted him. He patted me twice, I patted him twice, He patted me three times, I patted him three times. He looked a bit confused like he didn’t know what to do next so just waved his paw in the air before he decided to put give up and put both paws on me.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 03:43:28 +0000

My cat can count. She has shrimp every evening for dinner. She does not start eating until there at least three on her plate.

By: Razzberrie

Razzberrie — Sat, 03 Jan 2015 19:19:13 +0000

I agree. Since cats do not have great vision, it’s not exactly fair to use a visual test. But their hearing is pretty acute though, which could explain the counting of the food drops.

By: Nitrorabbit

Nitrorabbit — Fri, 09 May 2014 13:34:42 +0000

My cat eats at pre-set times so that we can control his weight. We are using the same dry food we were suggested to use by our vet. We converted the amount of food given in gramms into spoons so that we can measure easier: he’s supposed to have 7 spoons per day. Since I’m home most the times, he tends to beg for food all the time regardless how much he had had for breakfast – it’s in their nature the vet sais. So we decided to change from 2 feedings (3 and 4 spoons) to 3 feedings (3-2-2). Believe it or not, I noticed that when I’m giving him his “lunch”, he won’t start eating before I scoop the second spoon in the bowl. This is how I began looking on the web about how cats relate to numbers. I think cat owners would be the best way of conducting studies as vs the lab environment especially if the subjects are cats.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 01:34:25 +0000

Interesting stories. I wonder if the cat that heard the treats drop was able to use smell to determine that none were left.

I also wonder if a cat can count better in time rather than in space. Seeing 3 dots at one time may not give the same result as seeing 3 dots appear one at a time.

Just my two cents.

By: Payge

Payge — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 01:22:33 +0000

I personally think cars aren’t bright at all, by comparison to other house pets. IMO pet owners tend to want to see their pets as intelligent and engaged with them, and therefor tend to over assume when they see their cat not doing the exact wrong thing, which can still be attributed to dumb luck or remembering patterns (cats do have good memories as far as I know).

I also don’t consider their ‘regal’ detachment and ‘having staff’ as intelligence either- they’re solitary creatures that lack the social components of pack animals, dogs and birds show far more intelligence even if we regard their eager to please nature as inferiority.