I didn’t train the cats to do that; they decided amongst themselves to do so as an unintended consequence of my meowing with them (there was a perfectly rational reason for doing this as my cat was getting bullied by the other part Siamese tomcat, so I caterwauled this one out of our garden.
Mine started to signal just like a passive drugs dog whenever he heard the Police helicopter overhead or my radio scanner and would sit on a wheeled bin and look up to the sky; he may well have encouraged the others to do similar (the heli makes a very distinctive sound, cats and dogs can associated certain sounds with changes in their pack groups behaviour). The cops who look through the videos must have wondered why every time the heli flew over a certain area those cats were always there (others ignore the aircraft or run away when their hear it).
They also knew I was hanging around with various squatters includng a young woman who looked after a variety of animals; and there was a report in the right wing press that dealers were training pets to become surveillance aware.
The reality is that folk who do drugs still are perfectly capable of looking after pets, including those of their friends unlucky enough to be sent to jail – cats and dogs are smart enough to associate certain sounds/people/uniforms with their humans showing fear/apprehension or even being taken away, so warn others of the potential threats (it is only very recently that zoologists have realised that small cats also have social groups just like dogs, although this behaviour is more apparent in cats with a higher amount of Prionailurus spp. genes (i.e Oriental/Siamese cats, and many European shorthairs).
Raj’s pictures of things… – Pictures Forum
