cats

Before we got our kitten (2 years old) our older cat (8 years old) only had a handful of very similar meows. Sure, there would be tone so you could kinda guess what he wanted, but they were all variations of the same. The new kitten comes in, and she's a chatter box. She makes so many different sounds, you can always tell what mood she's in, what she's doing, and what she wants. It's lovely.

The problem with this is that she's started teaching the older cat new sounds, so on top of his normal sounds he'll occasionally make one that I've never heard him make before. And it's absolutely disorienting. He'll make a noise and look at me expectantly, and I will have absolutely no idea what he wants. He's always good to show me what he wants, but man must he think I'm an idiot now.

Okay, I have to chime in here, if only because I not only do this, but somehow distinguish 9 different sets of various meows.

I don’t have a favorite cat, but Honey Pie…well let’s just say I’m her favorite. She and I bonded a lot when she was a kitten because her back legs are incredibly weak, so it took her a while to figure out how to use the litter box without making a mess of litter on her legs.

So she spent a lot of her kittenhood gazing up at me adoringly while I cleaned poopy litter out of her fur.

Anyway, for whatever reason instead of a normal meow, she has something verging much more on a screech, and since she needs help getting certain places (you’d be amazed how few she can’t manage though) she has a lot of different screeches that she uses to tell me what she needs.

Sometimes she wants to go in the window, sometimes up on her favorite dresser, sometimes she just urgently wants to sit in my lap and wants me to pick her up even though she could make it with her front paws - as literally happened as I started writing this.

Anyway, my point is, I’m not sure there is a sound that instantly melts my heart like her insane screeching does. I love it and I can hear it from the other room, through music, whatever. It isn’t uncommon for me to randomly get up and dart into the room mid conversation but my wife understands.

She’s amazing and I could talk about her forever but I will just pay the cat tax:

That sound typically means “I want to be pet. I will flee if you try to pet me, I just want you to know that I want the attempt.”

Manny is…difficult.

Oh, sure. Cats, and dogs, too, can learn how to speak in their own sort of language like that. It’s simple, but effective sometimes.

For my cat, it’s mostly limited to:

• hello
• hey (to get my attention)
• I want something
• expressing happiness
• expressing unhappiness
• I am angry
• I am scared

My cat is kinda weird. No real proper meows, but a few sounds and mannerisms that tell me what he wants and one which I genuinely have no clue about.

• A kind of low volume, breathy, “heh”. He only really does this if we are already close to the food. If he’s anywhere else, he doesn’t say anything, he just behaves differently to how he acts when he wants attention. Way more mischievous and annoying.
• He wants attention frequently, but only in certain spots. For example, in my room he will only sit at the foot of my bed. He won’t sit on my desk or the chair next to me, nor will he move closer if I’m already in bed so I can pet him without moving. So what he will do if he comes in the room and I’m not in position, he goes to his spot, then just purrs or breathes really loudly. It’s super passive aggressive. He wants to let me know he is not pleased to be ignored, but not enough to move to me. Eventually he leaves if I don’t give him enough attention quickly enough. Idk why he can’t just sleep on my bed for a while if he’s just gonna go sleep somewhere else anyway.
• Sometimes he walks around the house carrying stuffed animals in his mouth and makes weird, pathetic sounding noises. Hard to describe. But it doesn’t SEEM like he wants our attention or anything. So, idk.

My cat was born from a stray, and I took it upon myself to raise her. She acts like she doesn't remember what it was like to be outside for two years of her life, as she has completely adapted to her regal lifestyle with no interest in going back outside ever. She is convinced that water straight from the tap is better than water straight from the tap into her bowl. She also will drink from the puddles on the floor after a shower, because that is somehow also better than water in her bowl. She also scratches at doors she wants open. She also was mad at me for an entire day for the two or three drops of flea medication.

Cat parents? We hoomans are just mere caretakers. Butlers. Slaves.

Just good parenting

Cats and dogs. All my pets over the years, I could decipher different wants and needs from sound or body language. They train us just as much as we train them.

Truth.