Genius!

At Jeanne's prompting, we gave Zorro a Cat IQ Test.

This is not to be confused with the CAT test, otherwise known as the "California Achievement Test", which many of us humans were forced to take as children.

Section A was the Cat Observation Test. Most of these questions were no-brainers. Does he eat or request food on a regular schedule? Oh yes, very regular. Does he recognize the sounds that precede his feeding? Certainly. I think about the only question he totally flunked was whether he could predict change in the weather that will take place within one week. Unfortunately, we could not afford to send our cat to weather school, so he is behind the curve in this area.

Section B was the Cat Performance Test. This was by far the most difficult section, as anyone who has attempted to get a cat to perform anything on command would be able to attest to. However, he enjoyed all test questions relating to strings and balls. In fact, the ball test resulted in Zorro flying around the room playing with the ball, and Alice dryly commenting, "We lost our test subject."

Sections C and D were extra credit (C were positives, D were negatives). No, our cat cannot take five steps on his own using only his hind legs, but yes, he can make sounds on request (we carry on conversations all the time).

The end result is that we found out Zorro is smarter than either of us, which to some degree we probably knew all along but you never want to admit. Anything above a 140 is considered "genius", and Zorro scored a 147.

I wonder if he's done any similar testing on us?