11 thoughts on “Communicating With Cats”

  1. My brother calls Tippy, “stupid kitty” in a soft voice, and she responds by jumping into his lap. She definitely talks and gets the point of what she wants across.

  2. That’s a good article. Anybody who thinks that cats can’t be loyal and faithful companions never met my Leo and Kira.

    They were born to my neighbor’s cat in 2000, and to make a long story short, they were literally born in my bedroom closet. So the kittens were handled by humans right from the beginning. I think that makes a difference.

    Leo died in 2007, and shortly thereafter I adopted another kitten. This one was rescued from the street. He didn’t have close contact with people from a young age, and he is more of a loner than the other two.

    I could go on for hours with stories about my cats. I’m deliberately keeping this comment as short as possible.

    1. Yes, there isn’t that much difference, genetically, between domestic cats and wild ones. If they don’t have early human contact as kittens, they’ll be feral and never really be comfortable with it. Larger cats can be domesticated, too, but it’s dangerous if something goes wrong.

  3. I was just commenting to black kitty about the Boeing 787 failsafe generator problem, in which after 248 days of continuous operation the onboard generators will just shut down in flight, cutting all AC power, even in the air, and resulting in loss of control of the aircraft.

    So then yellow kitty looked at me as if to say “A 0.01 second counter will overflow a 32-bit signed integer in 248.55 days,” although it came out more like “meow.”

    So, I wonder if there’s an aerospace safety expert around who could explain how “fail safe mode” means entering a state that results in the complete loss of vehicle and crew? I would think they would use a different term for that, like “Fuck it they’re all going to die mode.”

  4. I started out teaching Buckaroo that it was feeding time when I said “spoon-spoon,” referring to the spoon I use to put his food in the bowl (he gets fed separately for a medical reason). All of the cats have learned it.

  5. Hate to break it to the author but cats are not particularly complicated. He need not feel intellectually superior to dog owners for being able, after decades of observation, to figure out a cat.

  8. My Siamese would write whole novels during the day, then narrate them to me when I got home. The Manx kitties, OTOH, as a general rule don’t say much. According to breeders, it is genetic. Merlin’s voice might be mistaken for a rusty hinge.
    And anyone who has spent a year or more paying attention to their pet, be it canine or feline or avian etc can read their expressions. Doesn’t take a study to know that. 🙂

  9. Off topic: What Happens to your Brain on the Way to Mars? from Science Advances.

    The news from their mouse studies is bad. Unless you shield for high energy GCR, there could be noticeable cognitive impairment in a few months outside the Van Allen belt, and the damage is permanent. I suggest that cancer risk isn’t the big issue anymore. It’s whether the crew will be functionally retarded before they even land.

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