Something I once read is that different cats don’t seem to use exactly the same noise to mean the same thing, ie, one cat might use a certain sort of meow to show that it is hungry, but another cat might use a similar meow to show that they want attention. Further, that wild cats usually stop making many such noises after they grow up, but domestic ones keep using them to communicate with people. If this is true, then the cat noises don’t really represent a cat language as such since each individual cat would have it’s own different set of vocabulary it develops in an attempt to get humans to understand it, being forced to resort to being all dramatic and acting like a kitten to get their message across because humans are sometimes too clueless to understand their body language.
This is true, and it’s absolutely fascinating, because it’s literally the birth of a tiny language every time. The cat makes noise and notices that the human does something it wants, which makes the cat associate the noise with the action. The human hears the noise repeatedly and notices that the cat is happy about what they are doing, so they associate the noise with the action. It’s a shared language between two individuals, which is just so precious!
Your explanation is so precious!
Fun video from a while ago about the cat’s meow ;) https://youtu.be/qeUM1WDoOGY
And when our cats meow, there’s one thing almost every owner in the study said they did: talk back.
Honestly so adorable.
How rude would it be if I came home and ignored my cats greeting!?
Wait… you guys can’t understand your cats?
I read a headline on the internet once (in other words: What I’m about to say is almost certainly bullshit) that cat owners can understand THEIR OWN cats.
Anecdotally as a cat owner, it seems we train each other, cat makes a noise to get attention, human gives a kind of attention when hearing that noise, cat starts making that noise to get that specific attention. My cat has a food meow, an attention meow, a bath water meow (my cat likes to drink from the tub faucet) and a “it’s 3 AM and my brain can’t handle it” meow, and I can definitely tell them apart. There’s also a difference between the “enjoying a shoulder rub” purr and the “make me breakfast make me breakfast make me breakfast make me breakfast” purr. Hand me a different cat and that cat speaks mandarin Swahili.
Cats just meow to get our attention. Fun fact do you know that meowing is them mimicking the sounds of a baby?
No its not. You were mislead.
