Lily knows the word "mouse". She thinks it means toy. It was the first word she learned as a kitten. If you ask her where mouse is, she crouches down and looks at you expecting you to throw her the toy mouse. We don't have real mice, but I wonder and would love to see what she would do with one. She loves chasing flys. Her word for fly is bug.
She is actually very smart and has a rather large vocabulary of words she appears to understand. Naturally she knows her name and her nicknames and the word no. But she also knows birdies, dinner, yummies (meaning treats), come, belly belly (means roll over and give me your belly to scratch), nip (meaning catnip), feather, rings (meaning those little foam disks that get shot from a toy gun, boy she love chasing rings), spot (meaning the sunspot that reflects off my watch that she chases on the wall), grass (you say grass and she goes nuts and murrups at you until you give her some, we don't say "the G word" unless we are prepared to give her some, grass is good for cats digestion and we buy pet grass for them at the local pet store in the winter), and she even knows a few phrases like "not kitty toy" and "not kitty space" but with the phrases it may just be the tone of ones voice when you say them.
I think with enough reinforcement cats can learn all kinds of stuff.
(no subject)
She is actually very smart and has a rather large vocabulary of words she appears to understand. Naturally she knows her name and her nicknames and the word no. But she also knows birdies, dinner, yummies (meaning treats), come, belly belly (means roll over and give me your belly to scratch), nip (meaning catnip), feather, rings (meaning those little foam disks that get shot from a toy gun, boy she love chasing rings), spot (meaning the sunspot that reflects off my watch that she chases on the wall), grass (you say grass and she goes nuts and murrups at you until you give her some, we don't say "the G word" unless we are prepared to give her some, grass is good for cats digestion and we buy pet grass for them at the local pet store in the winter), and she even knows a few phrases like "not kitty toy" and "not kitty space" but with the phrases it may just be the tone of ones voice when you say them.
I think with enough reinforcement cats can learn all kinds of stuff.