Get paid for keeping your cats off the kitchen counter and filming it. This digital system slowly gives all kinds of tasks that allow the cat to get through without getting sprayed, and reach the kitchen counter in order to drink some water and get the satisfaction of having you yell in aggravation. It starts off with some simple croutching excersizes to get by being detected by the spinkler. But then it gets harder and harder, introducing reading and writing experiments with mathematical experiments.

You must every once in a while trick it into thinking you are angry at it touching the specially purchased cat keyboard, but what won't we do for science.

Proof of concept comes from our late dog Pizza, who was getting better and better at letting herself out of the garden, even though the obstacles kept on piling up against her. Once she learned how to get the wires loose, how to use the wooden boards as a bridge, how to dig under the fence to topple the new construction in the corner etc. she really started showing unprecedented intelligence.

She started showing confidence at home too. Once she even teamed up with one of our cats to let the two get out the front door of the house. Before that she was a totally stupid dog, never understanding our hints to play with the ball, and wagging her tail next to the door waiting for one of my daughters to open it for her, even on a rainy day when that was not going to happen.
-- pashute, Jun 15 2022

//Proof of concept comes from our late dog Pizza, who was getting better and better at letting herself out of the garden,//

This is a dog, though. We've bred socialization & a work ethic into (some) of them. We had a border collie that would escape the garden. So we added a latch, he bypassed that in ~4 days. We added a bolt on the other side, so you have to reach over, still bypassed. We screwed the gate shut, hoping that the dog would learn that there was no point in trying to open it. The dog climbed over it. We added a taller gate, the dog learned a kind of wall-run parkour to go up, around and over the gate.

In the end, we gave up. The dog didn't really want to be out front, he just really liked escaping, then sitting in the front garden in triumph until we noticed and pulled our hair out.

Cats work differently. Although their problem solving would be fun to watch. If you have a simple "crouch to avoid the sprinkler" problem, I suspect they might just sleep for 12 hours to see if the problem persists, then yell at you for ruining its whole life/getting more food. Then they'd probably put their paw over the sensor until it spewed all it's water, ran out of batteries and ruined the floor. Then would look at you with a kind of "have we learned anything here, human?" expression.
-- bs0u0155, Jun 15 2022


Nice overview of cats [bs0u0155].

I keep reading this idea and wondering where the /fragrance/ comes into it? Am I missing something?
-- xandram, Jun 15 2022


//have we learned anything here, human?//
This is the most likely outcome. Cats are already highly intelligent, but for their OWN purposes; where-as dogs can be trained to do what YOU want them to.
-- neutrinos_shadow, Jun 15 2022


//We had a border collie that would escape the garden.//

We had a border collie/golden retriever cross we could not keep in the yard.
When filling balloons with capsaicin and burying them in previously dug holes prevented digging she figured out how to run full tilt at the inside corner of the fence to run up the inside and walk out on top of the fence.
The gate was only gravity shut.

By the time the mail-order electric shock collar fence had arrived she had led her older companion rottweiler/black lab into traffic in the middle of the night and made sure it died.

She was bent on being our only dog and escaped again leading our next dog into traffic and killing it as well before we clued in that she was not only smart but a bit psychopathic as well.

We let her live out her life without getting her another companion.
Too damned smart... had to spell words around her if we didn't want to be understood.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jun 15 2022


We are aware of our kitty overlords, but thankfully they do not demand total servitude 24/7. This would be the end of civilization as we know it…
-- RayfordSteele, Jun 16 2022


r/Induce/Traduce ... </8th>
-- pertinax, Jun 21 2022



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