You put your coffee cup on the counter, walk away, and come back to find it shattered on the floor, except your cat is sitting next to it, completely unbothered. If you’ve had a cat in your home, you’ve probably seen this scenario before. If you’ve ever searched for “why do cats push things off tables” on Google, you’re not alone. This is one of the most-searched questions about cat behavior in the US. But the thing is, your cat is not doing it out of spite. There is real science behind it, and it is a lot more interesting than you think.
Your cat is basically doing a science experiment
Cats are by nature solitary hunters. Cats are not like dogs, who evolved to read human social cues over thousands of years. Their intelligence developed from their direct physical interactions with the world around them. They poke and bat and nudge things not for the fun of it but because that’s how they learn.
In the first few months of life, kittens develop what Dumas & Doré (authors of the landmark study published in the Journal of Comparative Psychology) call sensorimotor intelligence, the ability to understand their environment through touch, movement and immediate physical feedback. When your cat nudges your water glass to watch it wobble, slide and crash, it’s processing cause and effect in real time. The sound, the movement, the unpredictability, all data. Your cat is a little scientist and it doesn’t care about your stuff.
