My son and I have discussed this at length. All the studies about dogs being smarter that cats are 1) written by dog people 2) fail to take into account that the cat has probably figured out you still have to feed him whether he does the silly task you're requesting or not.
Sweet but I don't like the cat sitting on his shoulder while he rides his bike. If he hits a bump or has to make a sudden stop, the cat will go flying.
I tried to get that shot with Clyde the Cat (the guy in my avatar) for years. You know, black & white cat against colored leaves. The house two doors down always has a wildly colored mat of leaves in the autumn, and it was well inside Clyde's usual territory. But whenever I followed him outside with a camera I couldn't get him to do anything photogenic in the neighbor's yard, and I never got the shot.
We had a cat named Tweezers. He was a gray stripey cat, and to call him quirky would be an understatement. One of his vices was local-brand potato chips, and if they were stale, even better.
Our bedroom door has a cat door in it. When we bought the house we only had a window air conditioner in our bedroom, and the cat door saved from having to get up every twenty minutes to let a cat in or out.
One night there was a really strange commotion that sounded like a cat trying to drag a bag of potato chips through a cat door. Okay... Next there were sounds of a cat trying to jump onto the window seat with a bag of chips. Again and again. I was just too tired to get up, I guessed he'd figure it out, and he did. Then: Crinkle, crinkle, monch, monch, monch. Repeat. Monch, monch, monch.
The next morning we woke to potato chips everywhere. The cat must have found an old bag of chips in our son's room, and a snack in the air-conditioned moonlight was great entertainment.