[Zancarius]

Doubtful we'll ever know for sure, but sometimes it's difficult to discern with cats whether they know what to do but are just letting us do the work for them or if they genuinely don't know.

I suspect the answer is somewhere in between. Our cats have an approximate model of the house and if they see something outside the window, they'll run out the door and to that window knowing where the object of interest was in relation to the interior of the house. But, this comes from years of conditioning. They've been upstairs and have looked out the windows, but when I've spoken to them while they were immediately below the window they've sat on, they started crying apparently having no idea a) how I got up there and b) where in relation to their known "map" of the house I was. (In complete fairness this could be because they spend very little time upstairs since, unlike most cats, they absolutely love commotion and socializing with humans.)