I knew right from birth that DD was bright because she was soooo alert - she was born with wide open eyes and the first thing she did was to look around and then reacted to my calling by her name.
By two I was pretty convinced that she was MG....
Now I am pretty sure that she is EG.
But because of the multilingual education (four languages from birth) and her visual issues she is not an early reader. She is in fact learning to read now at the school.
The things that tipped me were mainly her alertness and her staring down at people when she was only one week old.
She did roll from back to side very early - by two months she was an 'expert', but I really thought this was normal....
She made remarks about 'Sinterklaan' (the Dutch version of Santa) when she was two and three months and before that she was asking questions about 'real' cats or cows, etc. Again, I thought that this was maybe a little bit advanced but not much.
Something that made me 'click' and say 'aha' was that by three she was comparing herself in a competitive way to other children. As well, her level of pretend play, which has been much more advanced than that of other kids of same age - or even older.
As for cats: I used to be able to speak 'catlanguage' and have long conversations with cats
![wink wink](/bb/images/graemlins/default/wink.gif)
I have lost the ability even though from time to time I manage to thoroughly confuse some poor cat who goes completely crazy looking the for other cat hehehehe.