Being the good cat slave that I am, I felt that I should learn to speak cat. In my opinion I'm not too bad at speaking the language, although I'm far from fluent.

Moggy is my main teacher. She speaks slowly for me so that I can hear her words clearly. From Moggy I learnt a magic phrase which goes "Meow-wow, mrrroot-mrrroot". I used this phrase on my friend's two male cats, combined with picking them up whilst repeating it. They became my friends after that. Unfortunately, I have no idea what this phrase mean. However, having learnt it from Moggy, the eternal flirt, I suspect that it means something like "hey handsome, you're looking mighty fine today" or something too raunchy to be written on this newsgroup.

Another word I've learned is a high pitched squeak which Vincent taught me. I know this means hello, and Vincent, being the sweet teacher that he is, sometimes rewards me with head-bonks when I pronounce it correctly.

There are a few other phrases that my cats have taught me. Tink specialises in swear words and general insults. "Harhssssss", for example means "you are the son of an illegitimate rat" and "humpf" translates to something along the lines of "you are a jerk".

My final challenge now is to master the throat rumble that Mango does. It's that tricky that I couldn't possibly spell it for you. She is a patient teacher though and repeats this word to me several times a day and has promised to give me yet another lesson tonight when I move her from the sofa to the bed later this evening.

So, from my cats and myself, "merrow, merrrrrow" (defn: "see ya later").

Copyright © Dewi Williams
March 13, 2001