20 People Share Stories About Their Pets Who Amazed Them With Their Intelligence

Pets can behave in an unpredictable way and there are few pet owners who have never scolded their animals for doing something wrong. Of course, it’s not easy to find a common language with pets and they sometimes seem to come from a different planet. But we do know one thing, everyone who has a pet, loves to brag about how smart they are.

We at Bright Side were fascinated with these stories about pets that were incredibly crafty.

• The smartest dog we’ve ever had was a cattle dog. One day, we figured out she had learned (without us trying to teach her) everyone’s name in the house. My mom just decided to try it, and said, “Go get utspg1980...” and the dog walked past 2 other family members, came into my room, and barked at me. We all split up into different rooms of the house and took turns saying, “Go to ____” and she went to the right person each time. © utspg1980/reddit
• My cat knocks packaged food items off the countertop, waits for the dog to tear them open, and then moves in for the prize. © SuzQP/reddit

• We used to have a basset hound with an iron stomach. To keep her out of the trash, we put the can on a step stool so she couldn’t reach it. Somehow she kept getting in the trash and we couldn’t figure out how. Until one day we caught the cat getting on the window sill near the trash and knocking it over for the dog. Little smarties work together to eat! © DefiantPossibility/reddit
• My cat figured out where the red dot comes from and started swatting the laser pointer out of my hands. © originalchaosinabox/reddit
• We’ve got a tree walker coonhound mixed with a beagle. When it’s bedtime, if everyone goes upstairs and I stay downstairs for a couple of minutes to lock doors/shut off lights/etc., she comes back down to herd me upstairs. © trazom28/reddit

• My beagle used to steal stuff and not give it back until you traded things with him for food. He especially loved my bras because he learned that dragging one onto the front lawn was guaranteed to make me come running. © Tiny_Rat/reddit
• My dog hurt his paw and would walk with one front paw all around the house. He’d look sad and mope around and my mom felt bad for him so she’d give him a treat to get his mind off his hurt paw. Well, eventually he realized if he walked around like that, my mom would give him treats. And he did this for a while, but he wouldn’t do it when I was there. It wasn’t until my mom brought it up and I told her he was faking that we figured it out. © blueish56/reddit
• My dog’s favorite toy is his Kong. It’s this snowman-shaped toy that you fill with kibble/snacks and it drops treats the more they play with it, throw it, drop it, etc. Basically, he figured out that the more it bounced, the more likely it was that treats would come out. So in the middle of the night, my husband wakes up because of a loud constant pounding noise and is like, “What’s going on?” It turned out it was our dog running to the top of the stairs, dropping his Kong down the steps, and then running back down and collecting all the treats that had fallen out. On repeat. © PancakesxBacon/reddit
• I had a hamster that had herself set up between the food bowl and the water bottle. She’d nap sitting up between the 2 — leaning one way for food, the other for water, and then lying back down. I eventually disrupted her very comfy-looking setting in hopes of getting her to move around more. Hamsters are supposed to run! © brandnamenerd/reddit
• My cat was being weird and looking super aggressive about my son following him around. There was a bat in the house I did not know about, but she did. Then the bat appeared, flew at my son on the couch, and she mid-air snatched it and held it, howling and furious for like a few long minutes with no chance of letting it go, even to kill it. And boy, did she want to murder it. I came over with a bucket. She moved her paw just as I put the bucket down on the bat. She protected my son and worked with me to remove it. This cat has voluntarily slept in his room for 3 years and counting since that happened. Love that cat. © Treepersonel/reddit

• My cat used to meow loudly next to me so I would wake up to feed her earlier, but I learned to sleep through it. Then she would nudge or nip me, so I would hide under blankets. Then she started chewing on my wooden furniture to wake me up, so I taped everything with double-sided tape. Now she just knocks over anything she can. She’s winning right now. © SunCactus321/reddit
• Our cat harasses my wife when she forgets to take the supplements that keep her from having seizures. © houinator/reddit
• One morning, my cat just started fussing over my mom, trying to lick her face constantly, and all that. Later, when my mom sat down on the sofa, the cat got into her lap, which is bizarre because the cat literally only ever sits in my dad’s lap. She NEVER sits in anyone else’s lap. We were so confused, the cat was just really paying attention to my mom for some reason. Then, out of nowhere, my mom’s heart starts beating at over 200 bpm. She suffers from recurring episodes of tachycardia that she has to go to the hospital to stop. When she got home, the cat had calmed down, and we all realized that the cat had seen it coming! Somehow she had realized that something was wrong with my mom and had paid special attention to her all day because of it. We still have no clue how. © giftedearth/reddit

• My dog used to have really bad separation anxiety when I was in college — some of the time she went to work and classes with me and we would walk to campus, but if I wasn’t planning on taking her, I would drive. So she started hiding my car keys. She had me really gaslit for a while until I finally caught her red-handed moving them somewhere I’d already looked when I left the room. © unknown author/reddit
• My cat always goes into the shower with me to monitor me — she’s afraid I might drown. Yet the second I turn off the water she is at the door and asking to get out. Also, if my alarm goes off and I am still in bed, she will gently sit on my back or on my face to wake me up. Also, she protects us by growling like a dog. I love her. © zongliere/reddit
• I had a pet rat that once found and alerted me of mold in the corner of my bathroom. One day, during one of our running sessions, he ran into the bathroom, started digging at the carpet behind the toilet, then went back over to me then made sure I was watching, ran back, and dug some more. My dad and I lifted the carpet and found that the toilet was leaking behind the wall. © chrisyroid/reddit

Have you ever had situations where you were amazed by your pets’ intelligence?