One of my cats is smart. He can't speak English (very well) but sometimes I think he is trying because I hear certain sounds and what he meant and what I interpreted it as sometimes agree.
Often however he pantomimes. If he wants out he will poke me, then run to the door. Okay, they all do that, but this boy thinks too.
We played string toy once. You know the game, you twitch the string and he pounces on it. One day he played it long enough to understand the game and has had no interest in it since. In the midst of play, he suddenly stopped, sat back and looked at the string, then looked at me. You could almost see gears turning in his head. Suddenly he ignored the string and sprang at my shoulder instead. Purring loudly he hung on to my upper arm then nipped my shoulder with his fangs, looked up at me and said with a happy expression, Mroew (translation: game over, I win, drop the string).
This guy however, is also capable of expressing dislike too without growling or hissing.
Years ago, the first time he saw me eating a banana, he came running over and demanded some of what I was eating. So, I broke off a small piece and put it on the floor for him. He sniffed it, shook the scent out of his nostrils, then backed up a bit and sat down looking at me as if to say, how can you eat that sh*t, ew! So I asked him what was wrong, don't you like banana? <Laughing inside of course>
What happened next stunned me. He got up, walked over to the banana, then scratched an imaginary hole into the floor a few inches away from it, then looked at me and very deliberately pawed the banana into the imaginary hole then pantomimed covering it up with the dirt, and with a disgusted look confirming his impression of it being fecal material and stalked away. Since then whenever he sees me with a banana he gets an Eww, yuck! expression and leaves the room.
Today, he found a new way of letting it be knowns some of my food is garbage. I had yesterday purchased a new to me product, of frozen crab and cheese balls designed (supposedly) for microwave cooking. So I just made some, put it on a plate and scooted for my office to enjoy it. From someplace outside he had heard the unmistakable clarion call of the microwave bell and came running back into the house and tracked me down to demand his share of the loot.
Meanwhile I had already eaten one of the crab balls and was thinking, this is the last time I will ever buy these, yuck. Suddenly there is the cat demanding to sample whatever it is. Not really wanting any more of it, I sat the plate down in front of him. He walks over and sniffs it with initial great interest, but I can see when his expression suddenly changes. Again he looks up at me with the now familiar 'are you crazy eating this trash?' look and backs away from the plate. I tell him, hey it is crab, you like crab, go ahead, try some. He looks at me a second, then walks over to the plate, and very deliberately 3 times pantomimes puking vomit or a hairball over the food, then gives me a hurt look and leaves my office.
Now I have cooked crab & cheese balls and no one here has any interest in eating them.