I know one local cat who has the biggest claws I've ever seen on a house cat, but he's an absolute teddy bear and never uses them.
Also octopussies are awesome. Had to. Octopai and cats in one place.
Discussion
yeah, they are both the peak intelligence animals in their domains also, teh forest and shallow coastal seabed, respectively. the cats around here i've noticed are extremely communicative, i mean i've seen chatty cats but virtually all of the cats around here are talkers. it's quite funny. i don't think they have many words, maybe 100 or so, but it's definitely language. oh yeah, and the blackbirds... holy crap they have a vocabulary. i had no idea. even some of their chatter resembles what i thought only european magpies do. and these high pitched whistles, and a bunch of other things.
Try to become friends with the blackbirds. They can remember individual humans. If they like you, they're awesome, happy little things. If not... Not.
i wouldn't know how to become friends with them. they eat bugs and worms, and are very flighty and evasive, they fly low and on the ground they have this way they run that is really comical, head down, like the upper part of their body forms a flat line from head to tail, and most of the time if you get within about 4m of them they dart off.