Hmm, our cats are packed with instincts like this. The housecat's brain is 30 grams source I dunno how much weight we can lose by shedding instincts but instincts don't take up a lot of brain.

BTW, one thing that really surprises me about cats is how smart they are for the brain size. Our (my and my gf's cats) a: are loaded with various instincts and reflexes, b: can understand stuff on first try. I have a small spray bottle that I tried to use as minor negative reinforcement to get dog and cats to stop doing annoying stuff. Dog seems negatively reinforced all right.

Cat sees the bottle pointing in his direction first time, looks with curiosity, then keeps on trying to get into food on stove, i spray him, he sort of lazily runs off. From that time on, he sees bottle turning his way, he just knows what the bottle does, he runs away. He understands how this works. Dog isn't like that, she's behaving more like getting conditioned over time.