So Cats really aren't as clever as dogs and psychologists?

Psychology lecturer Britta Osthaus has concluded that cats do not understand cause-and-effect connections between objects and is thus nit as bright as the average psychologist

She tested the thought processes of 15 of them by attaching fish and biscuit treats to one end of a piece of string, placing them under a plastic screen to make them unreachable and then seeing if the cats could work out that pulling on the other end of the string would pull the treat closer.

They were tested in three ways, using a single baited string, two parallel strings where only one was baited, and two crossed strings where only one was baited.
The single string test proved no problem, but unlike dogs no cat consistently chose correctly between two parallel strings. With two crossed strings, one cat always made the wrong choice and others succeeded no more than might be expected by chance.

Osthaus, of Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, said: "This finding is somehow surprising as cats regularly use their paws and claws to pull things towards them during play and hunting. They performed even worse than dogs, which can at least solve the parallel string task."

Quite clearly this experiment shows nothing of the sort. It fails to take account of the fact that cats know full well that nothing is worth doing that needs much effort. Ask any cat about the experiment and they will point out that that sooner or later they were going to get fed by the psychologist, so why waste important energy that could be better employed in a nice long rest.

I rest my case!