I think my cat is pretty smart

So the background is this:

In the middle of the night, Macca can get very enthusiastic and bouncy, like really bouncy, and it's a pain in the neck. As a method of last resort, I can spray her with a water mister, which judging from her appalled body language she hates and despises with every fibre of her being.

The thing is, setting up negative associations with pets doesn't always work the way you expect (a friend told me a story about someone who tried to train his cat not to jump on the bench, but instead trained his cat to jump on the bench and cringe), and she hasn't really made the connection that certain behaviour will get her misted, and that it would be a good idea not to do the behaviour. But she has worked out that if the water mister is pointing at her, it's a good idea to find something else to do, so I've only actually had to spray her a couple of times.

That's not the smart thing. The smart thing is that in every day life she doesn't give a toss about the Water Mister of Doom, and will happily sleep next to it, and happily watch me pick it up and move it around. It's only when she sees me move my hand to the trigger that she feels at risk and hightails it. Pretty neat, huh?

(Yep, I know that talking about cats is horribly cliched and I've reached my quota for the year. As you were, etc.)