15 Clever Pets Who Are Too Smart For Their Own Good

If you’ve ever lived with an animal, you know that their intelligence is often woefully underestimated.

A lot of people think dogs, cats, and other inside pets are purely motivated by food and belly rubs. While that may be true for some, others are so smart that it actually freaks their owners out sometimes. A popular Reddit thread asked pet owners to share the smartest thing they’ve ever seen their animals do. Their answers really made us think!

1. Question: Can he come over and teach our dog how to do this?

When he was a puppy, he taught himself to clean up. We still kept him in a nice and comfortable cage back then so he had a place to go to when he was tired or overwhelmed. Every night he would drag all his toys with him into his cage, and every morning he would bring them back out again. — Reddit

2. Sounds like a great way to start a kitchen fire, but okay.

Before letting my dog out into the garden I usually put the kettle on so I can make a coffee on my way back, well now he has figured out how to turn the kettle on and does this whenever he wants to go out — Reddit

3. That’s… actually a little bit eerie.

We had a litter and had one last pup to give away She was super friendly so we thought it would be easy, but every time we had someone over to look at her she would be super defensive and snap at people. We would then take her out and she said hi to everyone.

Apparently she saw all the other pups bond with someone and leave with them, and she had decided she wanted to stay .....

So my wife talked me into keeping her. — Reddit

4. Thank goodness our dogs haven’t caught on to this trick yet.

My dog “can spellâ€. Now I’m sure he’s just memorized the grouping of spelled letter as it’s own phrase, but it’s still adorable.

What I mean by this.. we can’t say certain words/phrases like “dog park”because he knows what that means and he will freak out if we don’t immediately leave for the dog park after saying dog park. So we started to spell things out like D-O-G-P-A-R-K or W-A-L-K... well we should’ve come up with a few other names to call it to rotate between, because he now knows what those spellings mean too lol — Reddit

5. “How dare you speak to me that way, human? Don’t you know who I AM?”

My cat said hello to me one time. It was incredibly cute. Also, I feel like cats have a specific language and every time we meow back, we say something completely random. One time I meowed at him, and I guess I said something a tad bit rude, cause he hid under the bed and glared at me. — Reddit

6. I guess if you’re going to break the rules its good to have manners?

New kitten is a messy eater, so we designated an empty tote as her eating area so she could be messy till she gets better.

I bought some new kitten food and left it out near the bin instead of putting it away. We wake up and she has dragged the bag to her bin (in another room) and tore it open to eat there. She could have easily opened it up where it was, but she was being considerate. — Reddit

7. She was just waiting for the purr-fect time to play with that specific toy.

A long time ago I gave my cat this stuffed toy that looked like my local university's mascot. She rarely ever played with it and it was collecting dust in the back of my closet. One evening I'm watching a college basketball game with my parents and the next thing I know she brings out the toy, drops it right in front of the TV, and starts meowing nonstop. Impressive that she was able to associate the two. — Reddit

8. It sure beats waiting patiently to be noticed.

We always leave the key in our back door, we have a tiny monkey stuffed teddy with a couple of bells around the neck as a keychain.

When our dog wants to go out he sits by the back door, at first he could be sat there for ages if people was upstairs or in the front room unaware the dog wanted to go out.

He learnt the if he kept hitting the monkey with his nose the bells would ring and people around the house would hear it and investigate looking for the source of the noise and in the process let the dog out.

Took us about a month to firgue out it was just the dog hitting the monkey to be let out. Only cause I literally saw him do it — Reddit

9. When it’s time for night-nights, it’s time for night-nights. Don’t forget to read him a story.

Every night between 7:30-8 one of my dogs stands at the bottom of the stairs and barks until you go upstairs with him and put him on the bed so he can go to sleep — Reddit

10. That’s very polite of him, but maybe he could let you know before making the mess?

So my cat isn't allowed in my bedroom at night. Usually he's patient about it. He'll be at the door when I open it, but he doesn't yowl or anything, even when I sleep late. But every once in awhile, he won't be patient. He'll paw at the door before my alarm goes off. It took me awhile to realize that the days he did this were the days that I found a hairball somewhere around the house.

Basically he wakes me up to tell me he made a mess. — Reddit

11. “Nice spray bottle. It would be a shame if something were to… happen to it.”

My cat strategically broke the spray bottle we use when he’s being naughty.

He picked it up by the nozzle in his mouth, took it up to a high-ish shelf, and pushed it off to the hard wood floor below. Did this several times until the nozzle snapped off, ripping out a big chunk of the top of the bottle in the process and rendering it completely unusable.

I didn’t realize what he was doing until it was too late. Smart little demon -_- — Reddit

12. At least she was neat and tidy about the theft.

Once I had an unpeeled banana, in a closed lunchbox, in my zipped up backpack, on a couch. Left the room thinking I'd put it in the kitchen in a few minutes. My corgi somehow knew the banana was there, unzipped the backpack, removed the lunchbox, opened the lunchbox, grabbed, unpeeled, and devoured the banana, all without ripping or breaking anything else. Everything was neatly opened and left on the floor when I came back to the room. — Reddit

13. Great, even a dog speaks more languages than I do.

My dog is bilingual. He lives in a household where we all speak Spanish and English. People outside of the home find this fascinating, but for us, it's normal to say just about anything in two different languages and he completely understands. We've noticed that if we talk about taking him to the vet in Spanish then he tenses up and slowly backs away from the room.

We have also tried talking about going to the vet in English (using different code words/sentences), and he looks at us as if he knows we are plotting something. — Reddit

14. Coming soon: “Live From The Litterbox, an Autobiography.”

My cat knows how doorknobs work. I've seen him trying to turn them with his paws (thank goodness he has no thumbs).

When he was a kitten, he figured out how computers work. He started to bat at the screen when he saw stuff moving. But then he paused. He looked behind the screen for a moment. Then he looked down at my hands. Then he started to bat at the keyboard while staring at the screen. — Reddit

15. Ads that feature doorbell sounds should be outlawed.

Wow, is anyone else feeling like they need to provide more enrichment for their pets right about now? We sure are. Without toys and treats to distract them, they might just take over the world!

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