~ The 'All things CATS' thread ~

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"In 1995, a green kitten "Miss Greeny" was born in north-west Denmark. Mrs Pia Bischoff found the green kitten near a hay loft. Its fur and even its claws were green and the discovery created a sensation among zoological experts in the country and geneticists hoping the colour was due to a genetic mutation. Mrs Bischoff, whose 5 year old daughter adopted the kitten, said she had tried to wash out the colour without success. A vet who examined the cat said it was perfectly healthy but confirmed that it had a copper patina, apparently present since birth, from the tip of its fur to the hair follicles.

There was a similar human case in a southern Swedish town in which the hair of several blonde women turned green due to the amount of copper present in corroded water pipes.The green colouration did in fact turn out to be due to the high copper content in water in the area - this had caused a verdigris effect on the kitten's grey fur. Such high levels of copper are often toxic.

The kitten and her 5 year old owner became celebrities for a while, but the green colour vanished as the kitten moulted her coat and new fur grew through; the new fur was unaffected by copper because the kitten was no longer drinking copper-rich water. "

After a brief period of fame, the green grew out as the cat moulted and the green kitten grew up into a grey cat. It was reported in several cat magazines and the Fortean Times at the time.

Sarah Hartwell, Messy Beast Cat Resource Archive
 
CAT CHAT! CAN CATS TALK?
(Copyright 1995 - 2005 Sarah Hartwell)

Can cats talk? Many cat owners would like to think so and some even claim that their cats speak a number of recognisable words. A Brazilian cat takes claims one step further by apparently being able to sing a number of well known songs while the Fortean Times carried a report of a cat which speaks several words in Turkish and suggested, with tongue firmly in cheek, that the reason many owners cannot understand their cats is because the cats are speaking Turkish. But before cat-owners rush out for phrase books, are these cats really speaking or are their owners just talking turkey?

For humans, the terms 'speech' and 'talk' are not restricted to vocalization, but encompass human body language (which most of us read without realising it), gestural languages (sign language) and tactile languages (of deaf-blind individuals) which are equally expressive among those fluent in their use. Further, human language comprises both verbal and non-verbal components (including the written extension of body language through gestural substitutes such as the <VBG >, :) symbols within Internet communication).

The cat's vocal apparatus differs from our own and is not designed with speech in mind. However cats need to communicate, both with other cats and with owners. They "speak" to each other through body language, communicating feelings and intentions through posture and facial expression. Scent is also an important component of cat communication. In addition, they have a vocabulary of sounds ranging from caterwauls to mewing sounds, from hisses to the "silent meow" which is probably a sound pitched too high for human ears to hear. The familiar "miaow" is used mainly for communicating with humans as we are evidently too thick to understand anything other than kitten-talk.

The remainder of this article will be concerned with vocalizations - the vocalizations used in cat/cat communication and the vocalizations used in cat/human communication. For more detailed information on feline body language and non-vocal feline communication, refer to Cat Communication. You may also wish to read Do Cats Have Emotions?

DO CATS HAVE LANGUAGE?

In "Alice Through the Looking Glass", Lewis Carroll wrote "It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens that whatever you say to them, they always purr. If they would only purr for 'yes' and mew for 'no', or any rule of that sort, so that one could keep up a conversation! But how can one deal with a person if they always say the same thing?"

On the other hand, "Your Guide to Cats & Kittens" (1973) produced by Pedigree Petfoods/Peter Way Ltd wrote that "mew" did not do justice to the cat's wide vocabulary - ranging from greeting to plaintive - and went on to compare the different vocalisations of several popular breeds: Siamese, Burmese, Longhair (Persian) and British Shorthair.

Lewis Carroll, it seems, was not a keen observer of cats, otherwise he would have noticed that cats do not always say the same thing! They make a variety of different sounds which, among humans would be called "words", but in our belief that we are naturally superior to "dumb" animals, we don't call cat-sounds "words". Since the sounds don't conform to our notion of grammatical structure, it simply appears that cats lack language.

To the uninitiated, and probably to Lewis Carroll, the simple "miaow" is an all-purpose word. Most cat-owners, however, are aware that there are a whole variety of miaows that differ in pitch, rhythm, volume, tone and pronunciation. Jean Craighead George attempted to categorise these according to the cat's age, gender and situation:-

Kittens:
Mew (high pitched and thin) - a polite plea for help
MEW! (loud and frantic) - an urgent plea for help

Adult cats:
mew - plea for attention
mew (soundless) - a very polite plea for attention (this is Paul Gallico's "Silent Miaow" which is probably a sound pitched too high for human ears)
meow - emphatic plea for attention
MEOW! - a command!
mee-o-ow (with falling cadence) - protest or whine
MEE-o-ow (shrill whine) - stronger protest
MYUP! (short, sharp, single note) - righteous indignation
MEOW! Meow! (repeated) - panicky call for help
mier-r-r-ow (chirrup with liting cadence) - friendly greeting

Tomcats:
RR-YOWWW-EEOW-RR-YOW-OR - caterwaul
merrow - challenge to another male
meriow - courting call to female

Mother cats:
MEE-OW - come and get it!
meOW - follow me!
ME R-R-R-ROW - take cover!
mer ROW! - No! or Stop It!
mreeeep (burbled) - hello greeting to kittens and disarming greeting to adult cats (also used between adult cats and humans)
There is more to felinese than the simple miaow though. In 1944, Mildred Moelk made a detailed study of cat vocabulary and found sixteen meaningful sounds, which included consonants and vowels. She divided cat-sounds into three groups:-

murmurs made with the mouth closed
vowel sounds made with the mouth closing as in "iao"
sounds made with the mouth held open.
Although these may not be used in grammatical sentences, one definition of language is "any means, vocal or other, of expressing or communicating feeling or thought" (Webster's Dictionary). Observant owners will notice the following sounds which cats make to communicate their state of mind (this list is not exhaustive, since cats will improvise):

Caterwaul - cat wants sex!
Chatter - excitement, frustration e.g. when prey is out of reach or escapes
Chirrup - friendly greeting sound, a cross between a meow and a purr!
Cough-bark - alarm signal (rare in pet cats)
Growl - threat, challenge, warns others to go away
Hiss (with or without spit) - threat, fear, warns others to back off
Meow - general-purpose attention seeking sound used by adult cats to communicate with owners or with kittens
Mew (of kittens) - distress, hunger, cold (to attract mother's attention)
Purr - contentment, relaxation, also to comfort itself if in pain (cats in extremis may purr); a loud purr invites close contact or attention
Scream - fear, pain, anger, distress
Squawk - surprise, shock
Yowl - a threat, offensive or defensive, but also used in a modified form by some cats seeking attention when owner is out of sight
Idiosyncratic sounds - a sound which a particular cat uses in a particular context.
The exact meanings of all of these sounds may be modified or emphasised by facial expression, tone/volume, body language and context (paralanguage). In his dealings with Scottish Wildcats, Mike Tomkies noted that the wildcats would greet him with a loud spitting "PAAAH" accompanied by a foot-stamp. I have received the same greeting from feral cats. The meaning ("*** off!") is unmistakable and only a fool (or a cat-worker intent on packing pussy off for neutering) ignores it. Some cats may use some of these cat-sounds in different ways when communicating with humans and only our familiarity with our own pets tells us that a certain type of growl is a play noise and not warning of imminent attack.

Another suggestion for teeth chattering, in outdoor cats at least, is to hypnotise prey. Some owners have claimed that cats can call birds, even flying birds, closer by chattering at them. Personally, I consider it unlikely that cats are imitating birds to encourage them to approach and the chattering more likely related to the birds being out of easy ambush range. I also find it unlikely that the chattering hypnotizes prey such as squirrels or chipmunks though it might make the animals curious enough to overcome caution. Many prey species don't have good colour vision and rely on movement for their visual clues and are lulled into a false sense of security. By sitting still, the cat is almost invisible, but it is becoming tense with excitement. Teeth-chattering may be related to the build-up of tension in a cat's body before it pounces or rushes its prey - you can see the cat tensing its limbs. The chattering seems to be an overspill of excitement. Another sign of emotional leakage in a stalking cat is the twitching tail.

Cat-owners will recognise many of the cat-sounds listed, although we may refer to them in more anthropomorphic terms: greet, grumble, nag, whimper, swear, sing etc. Some cats add their own idiosyncratic words to this general vocabulary such as the sudden exhalation of air used by my own cat, Aphrodite. This word, which we call "foof" or "frooff" can be anything from an exclamation ("Oh!" and "Well"), a comment ("So?" and "Huh?"), a non-committal response when we speak to her ("Hmmm"), or a noise to be used when she feels she needs to say something, but can't think of anything meaningful to say (small-talk and self-satisfied murmuring). It all depends on HOW it is said. For Aphrodite, "froof" is the all-purpose "supercalifragilistic..." of cat vocabulary. Scrapper used "mrrrp" in the same way.

Other idiosyncratic sounds reported include what David Kennedy calls a "Squabble - a series of short and long meows and grunts made in a complaining tone that occur when a cat is moved or made to do something it would rather not do". "Roaring" is more often associated with big cats than small cats, but nevertheless there have been several reports of domestic cats that roar, often to proclaim "I am here". Roaring in pet cats should always be investigated by a vet as it can be a symptom of throat problems. Some caterwauling tomcats suffer partial voice loss after strenuous yowling and end up roaring. Maybe those few perfectly healthy cats that roar their territorial claims were lions in a past life.


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realitybites said:
Isn't she special?!

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For some odd reason I feel as if I know what that cat is experiencing.

"I am hated for loving... I guess I'll lay down"
 
A picture of one of our cats. We call him Spook.

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What Kind of Cat Are You?
Cat Purrsonality Test


Have you ever watched a cat rolling in the sun and thought how wonderful it would be to be a cat? Have you wondered what kind of a cat you might be in a reincarnation? Take this little purrsonality test, and you might be surprised by the answer. Note: This test is purely unscientific and guaranteed not to turn you into a cat, but we think it's fun. I'm an Abyssinian. What kind of cat are you?


http://cats.about.com/cs/gamespuzzles/l/blwhatkind1intr.htm

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