All of the cats I've lived with down through the years learnt their names. One with some difficulty, I will admit. My current one knows both her proper name and the most common nickname I use.

I also taught my current one to come to a particular hand gesture because she gets a nice pat from it, although she doesn't always come to me. She also knows a handful of words, including "breakfast", "dinner" and "inside". She's just a tabby, so no idea of genetics. A previous cat I had was Burmese and she was smart as paint, as are most Burmese and Siamese cats. Russian blues are also reputed to be fairly smart.

Wade.