Ours didn’t seem smarter than other cats. Our biggest was Junior, a grey and black tabby. He wanted to go outside a lot and he was probably sleeping under a car and was injured and died. Charlie was orange and white, he lived to a ripe old age. The other one had a birth defect, something was wrong about the location of his liver and he died young.
My 3 cats-all shelter cats-do not go out-I live in BFE, by the woods where there are lots of rabbits, turkeys, deer-and predators. Getting lost in the woods, found and brought to the shelter is how my guys ended up there in the first place-and even a big cat like Yeti boy the Maine Coon is no match for a mountain lion, coyotes or a wild hog...
i *suspect* that there’s something in the cross with the lynx that makes the polydactyly; years ago a coworker spoke of an area where she grew up in Michigan (boy, I’m drawing a blank now, but it was probably 30 years ago this happened) and everyone’s cats were polydactyl. Something like that can creep in due to inbreeding and then stick around if its a dominant gene. I joked at that time that she should crossbreed the polydactyl cats with tailless Manx cats...