20 years ago, I made the stupid comment to my wife that cats were not intelligent, just parrots of behavior for food. She argued and said "we're getting a cat!"

20 years ago, I made the stupid comment to my wife that cats were not intelligent, just parrots of behavior for food. She argued and said "we're getting a cat!" "Sure, whatever" I said, thinking it would be "a dumb cat" and nothing more. Blow my mind, our first cat was a 3 month old feral, scared and pooping everywhere for the first few days. After just short of a week, my wife gained trust, and soon the cat was freely independent and appreciative. (He was scroungy, near death thin when we got him.) Then his personality began to show: he loved my wife painting and gardening, and he loved me working on 3D modeling. He would sit next to my monitors watching me modeling. After about a year of this, I realized as a model neared completion his purring would gain volume. Renders with shadows would get him acting out. I suspected he was reading me and my satisfaction, but that reading was pretty intuitive, and I felt intelligent. Also, he liked to be fed around 2am, and would wake me with a gentle purr to my ear and once waking he'd touch his mouth with his paw take it to my mouth and meow in a unique way he used at no other time. Often we'd stay awake for an a hour after his 2am feeding, and he'd take me into the garden and show me what my wife had been working on, pointing out the new plantings and places where she's trimming. His hunting skills were remarkable too. He was a jumper, and would suddenly leap 6-8 feed into the air and eat a fly. We rarely had flies in-house, thanks to him. Sad to say, he developed feline leukemia, hid it until his body smelled like rotting fruit and died the day we realized. After he was gone, we realized he always positioned himself downwind from us for the last year of his life. He was such an intuitive soul, he solidly taught me the intelligence of cats.