They asked if I was going to let the cat outside. At the time we had another cat we adopted from a vet and we let it outside so it made sense that we'd let this one out too. That was a hard no (although they didn't tell you that). It was basically a trick question and if you didn't answer to their liking, they rejected you. That was 20 years ago. Nowadays the cat I do have is kept indoors at all times.

Perhaps they thought such a clever person wouldn't be suitable for a cat, since cats like to have "owners" they can actually train.

clever people are trainable like all the rest, they are that much better and fooling themselves