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Comment by coward123 | Hacker News Reader

I have a cat who will deliberately create a diversion so that she can steal my chair. I know when she’s doing it, but I go along anyway because it’s fun. The first time I saw her do this, it involved pushing the lift button on the motorized standing desk. I stood up, she jumped into my seat. She does similar tricks with other chairs around the house.

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That could be Just a pavlovian response, unless she is creating different diversions every time.

Our cat does something similar to wake us up. When he wants to do this, he looks for something that can make a lot of noise with minimal effort. It might be something crinkly, or something that can be dropped, or a rug that can be scratched.

So we aim to prevent this by inspecting the area prior to bed, is there anything like that out?

The cat, then, surprises us sometimes by finding new objects he has not previously used, or out of sight. A recent example was finding a plastic bag in a crevice.

Touché

My dog has made the same realization. He's figured out if he knocks something that makes a lot of noise I'll come running to find out what is going on.

One of my cats is a whole another level though. Yesterday I saw he'd figured out that he can hold a Tupperware container between his front paws and then use his teeth to pry the lid off. Jerk!

It could be, but given how complex cat brains are, it probably isn't.

I've seen my cat attempt to plot a route into my home office (which is off limits to him) with his eyes. The last tricky bit is finding a way to get on top of the HVAC piping to jump off to the high (unglassed) window leading into my office. If he can solve that, he's in -- and he knows it.

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