How To Speak Cat

The first underlying principle in learning the art of communicating with a cat is to love your cat. And please note I am not saying "speak" with your cat. We haven't learned (yet) to use the sounds of a cat but you don't need them. How does loving your cat assist is learning to communicate with her/him? It will inevitably translate into being close to your cat. Which in turn means that you will learn from her how to speak cat. You will automatically learn ways to communicate. You will learn the nuances of her moods and habits. And habits are a very important part of the process of communicating with cats.

If you know intimately your cats habits, dislikes and preferences you will understand what she wants and when she wants it. You begin to understand her. It becomes a silent but very potent form of communication. Cats are very into routines as it provides comfort for them. Routines mean certainties and certainties preclude anxiety; the resultant calm equates to a feeling of comfort.

Most of the communication with your cat is to do with understanding her desires, what she wants. Cats depend on us for a number of things. That is the nature of the domestic cat relationship. And most of the time cats will take it for granted that we know what to do and when to do it. Sometimes we fall short and our cat asks and you will notice that occasionally a cat's tone of voice shows an irritation in our lack of action! If he or she starts to scream at us demanding something and we react as a result, that is the end of the beginning of learning how to speak cat. We are communicating. In response to a vocal demand from our cat we should provide a calm sound. It can be a human sound. But it should be the same kind of sound each time and a calm one. It will signal that we have received the request (say for food or to be let out) and are acting on it; followed pretty well immediately by action from us. Acts, the things we do, are a means to communicate with our cat. In fact our actions combined with calming sounds are a good way to speak cat.

Here is a video (above) made by someone else. I agree with some of it. Although, I don't agree, for example, that men should raise the tone of their voice. I think cats like calm melodious voices and a lower tone is more gentle on the ears. I also don't agree with the telling off procedure as it fails completely to address the cause. And the cause will often be us! So why blame the cat. Ther are other things but that said it is another person's viewpoint and I am all for that.

Our cat will meow, purr and trill plus do certain actions to encourage us to respond and we will respond by a calm friendly voice combined with the appropriate action. Here are some examples:

I stayed with the Flicks in Bedford, Texas recently. Zak, their Maine Coon likes to play. If he was in the corridor near my bedroom he would look up at me and perhaps follow me into my room. He would look up at me again and do the Maine Coon voice, a nice sweet meow. The combination of:

1. Knowledge about his preferences which were learned through past experiences with him by being close to him and;
2. Him following me into my room;
3. Him looking up at me intently;
4. Meowing;
5. Zak looking at the spot where the cat tease (the toy) was;

Here is another example close to home. My cat wants to go out to the garden (I let her go out unattended because I know she will only travel a short distance of say 20 feet in the garden). She will present herself at the cat flap but not go through the flap. She won't go through the flap because she is overweight and has asked to be let out before and I have reacted to it by opening the door. A routine builds up. I open the door reinforcing the routine. She goes out and when she returns she knocks on the cat flap to be let in. I let her in. She goes to her water bowl. I have made sure the bowl has fresh water because I know she will go to it after going for a walk. This is how to speak cat.

Note:

• meows are a call for attention
• purrs do not always mean contentment. How Do Cats Purr.
• trills include an expression of excitement
• chattering is your cat practicing biting into the spine of a bird to kill it
• cat sounds

From How to Speak Cat to Cats How to Do It

How To Speak Cat - Photo: published under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs creative commons License -- this site is for charitable purposes in funding cat rescue. fofurasfelinas is the best amateur cat photographer.