The Secret Language of Cats by Susanne Schötz

Author:Susanne Schötz
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Published: 2018-08-29T14:31:24+00:00

Voice and Melody

Chattering is mostly voiceless, whereas chirping is voiced. The short chirping sounds are usually either monotone or have a melody that declines slightly. Tweeting and tweedling in contrast can have more variation in their melodies. Tweedling consists of a combination of sounds with numerous rises and falls in the melody.

9

Learning to Understand Your Own Cat

Now that I have presented numerous cat sounds and their variations, I would like to use this chapter to categorize these according to a larger phonetic system. In the process, something like a verbal scaffolding for the language of cats will be produced. The different kinds of sounds will be presented in a table, so that the phonetic characteristics can be easily recognized. Furthermore, I will name more variations and will attempt to give possible reasons for these variations.

Summary of Cat Sounds:

The System of Cat Language

If we forget the articulatory-phonetic categories that Moelk introduced (see Chapter 1) for a moment and try to approach cat sounds using auditory (i.e. careful listening) and acoustic (analysis of acoustic patterns related to frequency, length [duration] and intensity [loudness or volume]) evaluations, we can categorize the various sounds that cats can produce according to a phonetic system and try to compare them to the sound systems of human languages such as English. As I have mentioned before, it is important to remember that the sounds made by cats cannot be directly compared with those existing in human speech.

Although cats communicate with their humans in a complex fashion, I have not yet found any indication that cat sounds follow grammatical principles or that every sound or type of sound can be translated one-to-one in a specific word or sentence in human language. That is not to say that cats cannot express their feelings, moods, wishes and needs with sounds. They most certainly can. But every cat develops a system—together with their humans, as well as possibly with cats they are close to—that allows them to communicate in a unique and special way. Every cat uses multiple forms of communication (with scent, with tactile signals, with visual signals, such as body postures or ear movements, and with sounds). In the end, they seem to choose the form of communication that best serves their needs and continue to apply it in similar situations.

Sounds often seem to be the preferred means of communication with humans, and meowing has proven to be especially effective as we react to it immediately. But meow is not a word, as it does not have a unique and unambiguous meaning. The cat communicates its needs and desires to us using different voice qualities, melodies, volumes (acoustic sound level pressure or intensity), and combinations of vowels and consonants. We humans learn, too, with a little practice, to understand these nuances and can even use them ourselves when we speak to our cats in human language.

A quiet, soft, and bright (with acoustically high resonances) voice usually indicates friendliness and affection, whereas a loud, hard, and deep voice shows that we are unsatisfied or angry—regardless of which words we use.

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