this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
62 points (84.4% liked)
Asklemmy
43978 readers
729 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We didn't so much teach this trick, as he learned it on his own, but we got an automatic feeder for him to help us with his diet. It feeds him 6x per day, and since we're no longer the ones giving him food, he has stopped begging us for food at all hours.
In any case, a few months ago, we noticed him in the dining room, staring at the grandfather clock. Then the clock chimed, and he ran over to the feeder and stared at it until a few seconds later, when it dispensed the food. He doesn't do this, except around feeding time.
So, it's just pavlovian: he's learned to associate the clock chime with the feeder, and has a general idea when feeding time is based on how hungry he is. Still, it's a neat party trick to tell guests we have a cat who can read a clock and tell time.
My cat can almost definitely tell time within about 2 minuts. At least for a specific time of day. He gets canned food the same time every day, and will remind me I've yet to feed him at most 2 minuts after (unless he's asleep). The only clocks I have in the house are digital, and none makes a sound. It takes him a few days to adjust moving to and form daylight savings time, and the change is gradual. He does this after changing apartments, so it's not some noise form the outside. I have no explanation other than he can tell time.
Its thought that dogs can tell the passage of time through scent. I'd be surprised if cats didn't do something similar