An orange kitten has charmed the internet with its smart use of a video doorbell to signal its owner that it was ready to come back indoors. Captured in a video shared with Newsweek by the security device company Ring, the kitten can be seen pressing its face into the camera and meowing, effectively using the device to get its owner’s attention.
Zhanna, the owner of the clever feline and the Ring customer who recorded the footage, explained how the kitten has learned to use the doorbell to its advantage. “My kitten likes to play outside sometimes and to get my attention to let him back inside,” she said. According to Zhanna, the kitten decided that the best way to alert her was to “shove his face into my Ring camera and meow and move around,” which triggered an alert on her device. She added, “I don’t know how he came up with this plan, but it worked.”
The footage ends with the ingenious kitten successfully making its way indoors, demonstrating a remarkable display of animal intelligence.
This isn’t the first time cats have shown their smarts. In 2017, a study published in the journal Behavioral Processes highlighted that cats possess episodic memory, capable of remembering specific events and locations similar to dogs. The research involved 49 domestic cats and assessed their ability to recall which food bowl they had eaten from after a 15-minute interval, showing that they could retain significant details about their environment and experiences.
Further anecdotes from cat owners reveal similar displays of feline cunning. One homeowner shared stories of her cats engaging in surprisingly complex behaviors when left alone, including opening freezers, disassembling parts of an oven, and climbing into kitchen cupboards, all captured by indoor security cameras.
These examples continue to challenge the conventional view of feline intelligence, suggesting that cats may indeed be as intellectually capable as their canine counterparts, if not more so in certain aspects.
