Why does the cat answer the phone?
by Michael
Why does this Turkish Van type cat respond to the ringing phone by firstly calling out and then walking over to it, knocking the handset from the base and then talking again?
It looks great but I haven’t seen a good explanation as to why it is happening.
I would like people to tell me what they think is happening. The video title says that the cat is answering the phone! This is a selling point obviously.
Fred, the crazy cat, answering the phone
Here is the video:
Maybe he is answering the phone, even though it looks highly unlikely. To many people it would be completely impossible that a cat can answer the phone. LOL. But what if his human companion trained him to do that? It looks like that to me. I am guessing. Please note that people like to join the word “crazy” with “cat”. It’s just a popular way of getting viewers, I suppose. I don’t like it because cats are not crazy – people are.
Of course if you say that he is answering the phone you are also saying cats can have conversations with people (of a kind). My experience says that cats can and do have conversations with people. I do! But there is a far bit of body language that supports the verbal conversation and on the phone that is not possible.
If he was not trained to answer the phone then perhaps the cat does not like the sound of the phone and has learned to stop it by knocking off the handset.
One interesting part of this is that the cat meows when the phone first rings. It is as if the cat thinks that the sound of the phone is the voice of a person. My cat, Charlie, responds to me when I talk to him. He has the same reaction.
For sure, the cat is not answering the phone in the way we think of that! This is because having removed the handset he meows and looks around a bit bemused. He looks towards the camera. And the camera is operated by the person who trained him.
That is my assessment for what it is worth – he was trained so that a video could be made. Well done. Nice video by the way.
Michael
