Are dogs smarter than cats?

[Catherine]

Quote:Yet what fantastic work our ordinary cats and dogs actually do. They are our faithful companions, standing by us through thick and thin, hardly ever losing patience with us, always being happy to see us, keeping our hearts in the right place and  our legs warm in bed. Many humans couldn't do that even if you paid them a yearly retainer of 100,000!

Is that 100,000 in pounds or dollars?

Seriously though, you can't buy that kind of loyalty. Cats and dogs both have their own style of loyalty. Dogs are more obviously devoted to us. Cats however will sit with you and purr and purr at a time when you really need them. They just know when we need that. 

Scientists do use neurons as their standard to judge intelligence. I am not sure that is the whole picture. It is not enough to have the neurons. You also have to make use of them. There are people who are clearly very intelligent who do nothing with their brains. They totally slack off. 

Dogs appear intelligent because they cooperate with researchers trying to test their intelligence. Dogs are more social and they do want to please humans. Cats are too independent to care what a researcher is trying to do. They are solitary by nature and cooperating with a group makes no sense to them.

They used to think that brain size alone could be used as a sign of intelligence. Even within the human species it didn't work. 
Some very intelligent people turned out to have small brains. They had just used them very well.

So cat vs. dog, I don't know. I have known slow learners in both species and I have know some very clever dogs and cats.