UMF researchers want to know, how smart is your cat?

Feb. 24—Ryan Ham and his fiancé, Hannah Gagnon, are about to find out how smart their 5-month-old Ragdoll cat Gobi is.

“‘My cat remembers the location of toys even after a really long period of time,'” Ham reads off a survey. “I feel like no, he’s really distractible. You can get him away from anything just by moving him.”

The couple are taking the Maine Cat Lab’s cat IQ test, a study out of the University of Maine at Farmington that’s assessing feline intelligence.

Ham and Gagnon sit in their apartment living room in Portland, watching Gobi posed on the couch and answer a list of questions about his memory, problem-solving and attention with thoughtful precision. The research they’re participating in is the first-ever international study of cat intelligence.

UMF researchers Karol Maybury and Bryce Cundick say they’ve already received almost 4,000 responses to the online survey, which allows them to assess the general intelligence level of cats, and whether some cat colors are smarter than others.

So how does Gobi stack up? The survey has a maximum score of 70.

“My cat’s IQ score is 35. Persistent and crafty, these cats are like Tom from Tom and Jerry. While their plans don’t always work out, their sheer determination and ability to think on their paws make them formidable,” Ham reads from the survey results. “Yeah, that does remind me of Gobi.”

THE MAINE CAT LAB

Maybury is a professor of psychology who studies personality. Cundick, the university’s library manager, audited one of her psych classes and had the idea to study cat personalities.

“We wanted to see, could we take the same metric that we use for people personality,” Cundick said. “Does it translate over to cat personality?”

Maybury said researchers have studied dog intelligence, but cats haven’t gotten the same treatment. She and Cundick started with an initial survey that studied cat owner personalities based on the five-factor model: conscientiousness, agreeableness, extroversion, neuroticism and openness to experience. They received 1,500 responses (neuroticism doesn’t increase with the number of cats, according to their results), then moved on to a totally new question: cat IQ.

They designed a survey that asks cat owners about traits like memory and dexterity, as well as attachment style. The pair have advertised their survey on TikTok and YouTube, an effort that paid off in thousands of responses worldwide.

So what are the results? Maybury analyzed the data of the first 3,200 responses and said Siamese and tuxedo cats are currently considered the most intelligent, with average IQs of 51.55 and 50.65 respectively. Orange cats used to rank at the bottom when the researchers had fewer responses, but now Ragdolls have taken up that spot, with an average IQ of just 37.34. Orange cats — known for their chaotic personalities — fell second to last, with an average of 43.4.

The intelligence differences between most individual color groups aren’t that significant, but orange and Ragdoll cats do have statistically significant low IQs compared to other colors. The data shows no notable gender differences in intelligence.

Maybury is careful to point out potential biases in the data, like how expectations or confirmations about the behaviors of cats might influence survey answers. And the researchers say this is just a first stab at understanding cat intelligence.

“Certainly, there have been some people who are like, ‘We don’t think you’re measuring anything accurate, anything valid at all,'” Cundick said. “And our response to that has been, ‘Look, this is new. This is something that people haven’t tried before,’ and we’ll try it, and if we see nothing from it, then we’ll be able to be like, ‘Yep, we tried, and there’s nothing there.'”

Once this survey closes in a couple of weeks, Maybury and Cundick said they’ll craft an updated one that includes questions about spontaneous learning, emotional intelligence and vocalizations. They’re also writing a book, which Maybury said is being shopped around to publishers.

WHY STUDY CATS?

Maybury said one application of the study could happen in the cat adoption process. She said the survey could shed light on personality, compatibility and adjustment, which could help shelter cats get adopted and reduce the need for euthanasia.

Matt Blanchard, communications coordinator at the Animal Refuge League of Greater Portland, said the Westbrook-based shelter isn’t having any trouble finding cats homes right now. The shelter did 14 adoptions on a recent Saturday.

Blanchard said the key to facilitating adoptions is getting to know a cat’s unique qualities and needs, and the league has three full-time staff members who assess animals for behavior and personality when they come in.

“I definitely think that people can come in here with some preconceived notions about things, and it’s really important for us to tear those down, then start building them back from the ground up from our personal experience working with (the cats),” he said. “I’m never just like ‘ugh, here comes another orange cat.'”

But Blanchard agrees that there’s a lack of research on cats and their intelligence and even their capacity for training. At the shelter, many cats participate in a national clicker training program called Cat Pawsitive, which teaches tricks like spins, high fives and bell ringing.

On Friday, Blanchard showed off the skills of 4-year-old black cat Ben, one of the trainees, as he did a spin.

“Intelligence isn’t just something that’s just innate. It’s something that you can hone and grow, and we want to make sure we’re doing that for our animals,” he said. “And it is something that I think helps them stand out a little more and get adopted.”

For Ham and Gagnon, finding out Gobi isn’t on the smarter end of the cat spectrum isn’t a problem at all. Their other cat, Sunny, is orange, and they said he’s got all of the classic traits.

“I like that both of our cats have strong personalities, and this is just a part of it,” Ham said.

“I think intelligence is cool, and we should definitely try and explore it with Gobi and see what we can do, but … if we went to a shelter to adopt a cat, I wouldn’t be looking for it,” Gagnon said.

Maybury said another benefit of the study happens in her own classrooms.

“It captures students in a way that a typical statistics course or example might not. So even questions like, is this valid? Are these the right questions that we asked? Did we use the right scale? Having students be part of that endeavor, I think it helps them learn. It meets them where they’re at, and then they can extrapolate that concept when they go to work at a bank or do psychometrics in graduate school,” Maybury said.

Many of the cat lab’s YouTube videos end with a pitch to study participants about the college.

“We invite you to join fellow cat lovers at our small, affordable university in the beautiful mountains of Maine,” Maybury said in a recent roundup of study results. “UMF allows cats in the dorms with students, students volunteer at the local Franklin County Animal Shelter, and we even have a pet of the month contest.”

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