Many of the cat's remarkable mental and physical abilities are dismissed as simply instinctive. However, just as humans are born with innate communication skills but must learn over time to master a language, cats refine many of their inborn abilities through practice. The widely-held belief that they learn through observation and imitation of their mother or other cats is now being called into question. Cats do learn, but in a different way than do humans or dogs; they have a special kind of intelligence.
