It’s fucking amazing the way cats have adapted to life with humans okay
like they domesticated THEMSELVES because us storing grain created a habitat for rats and they were like ‘why hunt in the wild when I can hunt in one place?” and then it turned out we had these fireplaces with nice warm hearths AND that we were willing to put rugs on floors and cushions on chairs and surrender our body heat if we were properly mollified and cats were like ‘hell fucking yeah’ and just moved the fuck in.
But the above poster is right, cats don’t meow at each other very much. Feral cats rarely vocalize in our hearing range at all, and when they do it’s because they’re about to do violence. Not only did cats adopt us, and not the other way around, they developed a method of communicating especially FOR living with us. They observed that humans make mouth sounds in a specific range and started making their own mouth sounds in that same range in the hopes of communicating their needs to us and if you don’t think that’s the most awesome shit get out.
But it gets cooler. Obviously cats have variable intelligence - I have met very bright cats and I have met truly stupid ones. But the species as a whole has the ability to make somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 distinct vocalizations that humans can perceive. Which means cats can CHOOSE A MOUTH SOUND that means ONE THING and have it consistently mean that one thing. And humans who bother to pay attention can actually learn what the cat is saying and respond to it properly.
Mine is one of the bright cats who does that. So far, her vocabulary of distinct and identifiable sounds include:
there’s something outside and you should look at it immediately
there is an insect somewhere and I intend to murder it
Can I come sit with you/are you willing to pet me
Hello Mama (she has a special sound for me)
Stop making that noise or I will literally bite your face (she hates people whistling)
Who are you/What are you doing? (this one can be used with varying levels of suspicion and/or hostility, I’ve noticed)
Bird! (or other out-of-reach prey object… this is paired with that teeth-chattering thing they do)
And the most amusing one: Mama, it’s time for bed. She developed this one within the last few years when she started sleeping on my pillow. Obviously that’s no fun unless my head is also on the pillow, so when she wants to go to bed, she comes and tells me it’s time for ME to go to bed so she can sleep on my face.
And the thing is, I don’t actually think I listed all of them. We joke constantly about how Sephie bosses my husband around because she can make herself understood very well but the truth is, her vocabulary makes her about as easy to understand as your average toddler who can say ‘milk’ when she wants milk. Cats are cool as shit and brilliant when they want to be and I will never get over it.
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