I'm sure your cats, like ours, talk to you. At our place Emily is the gabbiest. And of course, like us, you probably reply to them. It's odd. We enjoy these human-cat conversations but we really don't know exactly what each other is saying. It's probably our fault. Catspeak is incredibly complex. Not given our dexterity of tongue and lips, cats do very well not only with body language, but with the infinite variety of vocal sounds and volume they can produce. They mutter, they croon, they cajole, they yell at us, and we immediately get the message. But I'm sure our monotonous human jumble of sounds is virtually meaningless to them. Only one word means anything to our cats - their names. They're listening to our tone of voice, its volume, and watching our body movements. So I experimented with "cat sentences". First I tried things like "Blah blah blah, Martha", or "Dum de dum de dum, Sophie." Very little reaction. But then I remembered a catch phrase from one of our favourite sitcoms, Seinfeld. "Yadda yadda, Emily," I said. "Yadda yadda!" She brightened immediately and meowed her reply! I'm only glad you can't overhear our conversations now - or worse, record them!

Copyright © Bobcat
October 25, 2006