Well this one idea that has been running through my head lately; teaching a kitty/cat how to play a video game. I mean people have tought cats how to eat with forks and stuff but have u ever seen one play a video game? and not a too advanced game but something simple(tetris,super mario,etc.) i might do this later in my life but i just wanted to her your opnions about this idea.

They can't. Animals learn upon repition - Unless the game was the exact same way every time, and an extremely intelligent cat, it wouldn't be able to do it.

Well... first off, you'd have to teach the cat to watch TV. That's pretty simple of a task since I know my cat watches TV . Next would be to show it that pressing a button changes something on the screen. THEN you need to teach it the concept of winning. Next would be to teach it the meaning of life.

I think they already know that one, otherwise there would be no more cats.

This topic is incredibly ridiculous.

Sure, some have taught cats to speak english, but they do not even understand what they are doing when they do speak.
They would not have enough common thought to do such a task as playing video games.

How would you teach a cat to speak? They can't form very many sounds. They can't even teach apes to speak English (not counting sign language.)

Pong is a very simple game. Try that.

The question is a matter of association.
Perhaps cats are different - I've seen plenty of videos of animations on computer screens driving them crazy - but my dog simply cannot grasp the concept that where he is looking is part of one of the commands I'm teaching him.
Actually, back to the videos I've mentioned... I think they set a pretty decent precedent that cats can recognize computer screens as reactive things. Set up a touch-screen for pong. Now the problem is teaching it the "physics" working on the ball, and to work towards the game's goal - it'd take a long time to form an association between "ball disappears on right-hand side" and "WHOO! FISH!"

Cats and dogs can understand English by taming them. And if this cat learned how to scuba dive and swim, of course new ways will happen soon enough.

I doubt they actually understand English... They probably just associate the sounds with certain actions and reactions.

What Farty said.

But don't we humans just do the same? ;p

I don't think it's possible. Maybe, just maybe, with an extremely simple and repetitive game. But animals are very complicated robots. And cats are overrated. gg

Well, you probably can't teach it how to operate a video game, but you can probably teach one to play a game such as tag or catch (Catch meaning it pushes it back to you). My two cats actually played catch before and I never did anything to teach them.

But I think thats a natural thing to keep them occupied -- my cat and dog do that all the time.

most cats and dogs just respond to the tone or length of the command
but yea sometimes pointing at stuff works too, you got the point tho

Animals are not very complicated robots... Robots are very simple synthetic animals.

Get your precedents right. God > Microscopic Organisms > Man > Animals that you don't need a microscope to see