17 Stories About Pets Who Mastered the Art of Mind Games

When we get a pet, we think that it will just make us happy. And it is so pleasant to scratch the fluffy tummy. But some little friends manage to pull such tricks that you realize that they are clever enough to manipulate us.

• We got our dog a year after our son was born, and this happened when she just joined our family. Once, I left my 1-year-old to nap in my room and went to the kitchen to cook lunch. And when I came back, I saw that the dog was standing on its 2 legs and holding my son, who had rolled over to the edge of the bed in his sleep, not letting him fall.
  I don’t know how long she stood like this, but she — a tough and resilient pit bull — was already shaking from tension. Thank you to her for this! © Owl from the thicket / Dzen

• My cat gave birth to 6 kittens. So I was busy with something when the cat came up to me and meowed. I followed her to the room and asked what’s wrong. She is puzzled and obviously asks me, “Where are the children?” We start looking for them.
  I look under the sofa, she looks there with me. I look behind the fridge, she climbs in, shoving me off. So we searched the whole flat, corner by corner. The kittens, 6 of them, were gone. I got tired of searching, sat down on the sofa, and then I saw a tiny pink heel sticking out from under the sofa cushion.
  I threw back the sofa cushion and saw all the kittens lying like sausages, one after another, with their noses in each other’s bottoms. If it hadn’t been for the pink heel, I don’t know how long we would have been looking for them. “Here are your babies, Mommy,” I reported to the cat. © rustling in the grass / Dzen
• We adopted our Missy when she was an adult cat. And she had a temper. If someone opened the fridge and didn’t feed her, she would naturally faint. Right with a bang, on her back and her front legs crossed over her chest.
  So the husband goes to the fridge, the cat again falls on the floor. And then my husband tells her that fat kitties can’t pretend to faint from hunger convincingly. It’s time to take on a new character. Apparently, she agreed. © Elina Linberg / Dzen

• A friend of mine has a very shy cat. He doesn’t go to the litter box, but to the toilet. And once, the cat was sitting on the toilet, and my friend decided to go to the bathroom. The cat fell into the toilet from surprise. She fished him out and washed with shampoo.
  Since then, when the cat sits on the potty, he shrieks, like “Occuuuuupiiiied.” © Konstantin Pyatkov / Dzen
• We fostered Bagheera, a young black cat who was always hungry, for some time. She always needed to chew on something, even though we fed her in abundance with Musya, our cat. She found a bag with breadcrumbs on the balcony, so she made a hole in it and chewed rye breadcrumbs. We put them in a new bag and moved to the pantry in the kitchen.
  And then one day we couldn’t find her. Mom said, “Musya, where’s Bagheera?” Musya looked at my mom, went to the pantry door and looked at the door handle. They opened the pantry, and there’s Bagheera with a face that said, ’’It’s not my fault, these breadcrumbs chewed through the bag themselves...’’
  Then we’d always ask, “Musya, where’s Bagheera?” And she always led us to the place where this black misfit was hiding. © Svetlana Guskova / Dzen

• Our cat saved me when I was a kid. My grandmother closed the flap in the stove too early and left the house. I was asleep. When I woke up, I felt sick. I felt very dizzy.
  But I would have never guessed to leave the room filled with carbon monoxide. And my beloved Murka started begging to go outside. She stood at the doorstep and meowed loudly. She could have easily left through the cat hole in the cellar.
  But she was calling me outside. I remember, I barely reached the threshold, opened the door and decided to go outside with the cat. I took a breath and waited for my grandmother outside. © Elena F. / Dzen
• I am allergic. One day I had a severe bronchospasm. I was lying there, unable to breathe in, breathe out or turn. My adored cat Suzanne came and lay on my chest.
  She warmed me up, made my chest start breathing again, and went back to her chair. I still remember my calico. She left us when she was 21 years old. © Marina K. / Dzen

• I had cat Antonina, who liked to sleep on my chest. One day I fell ill: high fever, my heart was pounding so hard that it seemed it would burst, my left arm became numb. I’m lying on the bed, unable to move a finger. And then Antonina jumps on my bed. Well, I think, now she’ll climb on my chest, and I’ll be choked to death...
  But no, she stretched out to her full length, lay next to me along my left side and froze. And here I felt that my pain began to subside. I began to stroke the cat with my left hand, and the pain went away, and my heartbeat calmed down... So we lay there until I fell asleep.
  She also screamed like crazy and ran back and forth when the pipe in my kitchen leaked, calling for me. Cats are very clever creatures. © Olga, — / Dzen
• My brother was just born and slept in his cot. And the parents took a puppy into the house, and he had already grown up into a big dog, but continued to live in the house. This idyll lasted until they noticed that at night he comes to my brother’s cot, pulls off his blanket, wraps himself in it and sleeps until morning. So there are all kinds of animals! © volgdud / Dzen

• My aunt lived on the ground floor. She accidentally locked herself out of her apartment and left the key inside. She asked the neighbor to climb through the window.
  He asked if there was a dog. Auntie said only a harmless kitty cat. When the man stuck his head in, the kitty clung to his face... It was awkward. © natalya soboleva / Dzen
• When Marta was smaller, she loved to hunt my legs when I was sleeping. It’s been a while, the cat is big now, but a couple of days ago she decided to return to her games and clawed my legs sticking out from under the blanket. I reacted instantly, the claws are sharp.
  I wrapped myself in the blanket and lay quietly. Marta tried to reach my leg several times, but it didn’t work, the blanket was thick. Quite dissatisfied, she climbed on top of me, bit my arm and proudly left, like she considered her mission accomplished. © Koo-koo / ADME

• My kitty has trained my husband: she wakes him up at 4 a.m., takes him to the kitchen so that he puts food in her bowl and stands next to her while she eats. So when my husband was out of town, the kitty stayed with me and quietly snored until 9:30 in the morning, without waking me up.
  Then the kitty was taken to the countryside. Early in the morning, my husband calls, “Are you coming in the afternoon? Grab the cat’s goodies. She doesn’t believe me that I don’t have them, and wakes me up a million times in the morning!” © Koza_pedalnaya / ADME
• One of our cats really disliked the sound of the alarm clock on my husband’s smartphone. She can’t tolerate high-pitched sounds. So, one day she tried to “bury” the phone and accidentally touched the screen with her paw, disabling the alarm clock. After that, she purposely switched off the alarm clock to avoid hearing the sounds that disgusted her, so my husband was indignant that he overslept. © SON5SON / ADME

• My cat is Laurence Olivier when it comes to pate or goodies. In the morning, he runs to the first one who wakes up and leads them to the pantry where his food is stored. And since everyone wakes up at different times, he gets an extra portion 2 or 3 times. A remarkable acting talent. © Ilona Staller / ADME
• That’s what our cat used to do. My husband gets up much earlier than me, feeds the cat, has breakfast and goes to work. Then I get up, the cat cries like he hasn’t been fed for 24 hours. I always feel sorry for him and feed him. The cat lived well for a month until I asked my husband why he didn’t feed the cat in the morning. © Unwise Owl / ADME
• My aunt’s cat used to wake her up at 5 a.m. every day. When he realized that his shouting didn’t work, he started coming up to her favorite curtains and putting his claws into them. At the same time, he made it clear that he was about to start scratching them. At exactly that moment, the aunt would get up and go to feed him. © Boris Senatorov / ADME

• My dog never disturbs my sleep. He hardly breathes in the morning so as not to disturb his owners’ sleep. He decided this for himself for some reason. He also never allows himself to push, scratch, bite, take someone else’s things (he plays only with his own toys). Stealing food is totally off limits.
  But when you open the fridge and take cheese, that’s it. Your hand is still there, in the fridge, you just want to reach for a piece of cheese — and the dog is asleep in the far room, twitching a paw and snoring — you turn your head and see him sitting and staring at you greedily.
  When? How? I don’t even know if I want cheese yet. But my dog does. It doesn’t work with any other kind of food. © Salivan / ADME

And some pets mastered the art of hiding from their owners. Check out here how they do it.