purr

While dogs can often be taught new tricks, cat-owners will be all too aware that it can be very difficult to persuade them to do something they don't want to do. Eddie Izzard summed it up best in his legendary Pavlov's cat sketch, where felines are quite capable of outfoxing (outcatting?) eminent Welsh-Russian psychologists. Real cats may be less devious, but only just - new research suggests that they are very skilled at getting their human owners to do their bidding. When they want food, domestic cats will often purr in a strangely plaintive way that their owners find difficult to ignore…