Excellent post, screamincheetah. I can see you know your cats.
I've had cats my whole life, and I've found that many of them can be trained. It depends on how smart they are and how stubborn they are, and my observation has been that there's a pretty wide range in both of these. The smarter cats won't be completely instinct-driven, so they'll be more able to modify their behavior based on whatever fuzzy reasoning they can manage. I've taught cats how to open doors and windows, to fetch, to roll over on command, to jump on my shoulder, to get down off the counter/table/desk on command, and to sit quietly to the side while I'm eating my dinner. Some of these (fetch, roll over, jump) were basically me building on things the cats tended to do already. In my experience, Siamese cats are the least trainable because they're too full of themselves (before all the Siamese lovers start yelling, please know that my family used to raise them so I have experience). I once witnessed one of them running off with an entire roast, our holiday meal!
