My experience with Anki and similar programs has always been that my ability to recall the learned information is heavily dependend on context. Words or facts I can perfectly recall in Anki often didn't come to me in real-life situations.
As mentioned in the book and website "Fluent Forever" (a language learning method which also recommends Anki), it's better to translate from a picture to the new language rather than learning to translate from your first language.
"No Translation"
"Use pictures when learning new vocabulary and grammar rules. You'll discover that you can actually remember what you've learned."
[1] "Fluent Forever" suggests trying google image search in your target language because many words are not direct translations, and you'll notice differences in what types of images come up for words. gato/cat is not a great example of this though
I would try using pictures more to see whether there actually is a difference, but most words I'm practicing with Anki don't corresponding to visible objects at all.