Wikipedia: cats are good observational learners but don't have a good grasp of cause-and-effect.
My cats: all right, so he's closed the wet room and the water is pouring, that means he can't hear us, and we can break into the food storage. As soon as the cover falls on the floor, we have this long until he comes into the food room, so we need to grab what we can and start running.
[I wish I was making this up, but they've done it on two consecutive evenings]