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cat that uses leaves as “money” to buy fish is a popular and heartwarming anecdote shared widely online, though it is often considered an illustrative fable rather than a verified fact. 

Many variations of the story exist across different social media platforms, including those shared by pages like “David Attenborough Fans”. The core narrative suggests a clever stray cat observed human transactions at a fish market and mimicked the behavior by bringing a leaf to a kind vendor, who played along and exchanged it for fish. 

While cats are intelligent animals capable of observation and learning from their environment, animal experts suggest they are not generally intelligent enough to understand abstract human concepts like currency or a formal trade system. The story highlights themes of: 

A very similar, more verifiable story exists about a dog in Colombia that learned to use leaves to “buy” cookies from a school cafeteria. The cat story is likely a variation of this or a fictional narrative inspired by the image.