Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePhanastasio
I have owned cats before, and can assure you: Siamese cats? They seem just as smart as people at times. My mom's siamese loves balloons, and one time, she had eaten the string to the point she couldn't reach it. She said something that sounded like, "RRRRET REEE BARRROOOOOOOOON RROOOOOOOWN."
I said to her, just jokingly at the time, honestly, "Did you just say to get the balloon down?"
She NODDED at me, and walked several steps closer, pointing again at the balloon with her paw.
"Rrrreeet. Barrrrrrrooon. Dowwwwn. Nowwww." she said. I obliged, and she was one happy kitty, but I'm saddened. She can learn to emulate human speech and body language so readily, but we can't even learn what a simple meow means.
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Meows are largely inconsequential.
They're additives, and never the whole effort, nor are they ever the point. They simply make the noise because they know it gets our attention, which could betray any type of want or need behind it.
I think the key is to just figure out the behavior of the animal, as it figures out the behavior of you. You get into a sync. It's less about knowing what it's "asking for" in terms of vocalization (which they don't do in the wild outside of mating calls and warding), and combining that with their more natural means of communication which is mostly body language. (Smells, we are not capable of interacting with on that level as they would with other cats)
I think the easiest way to communicate with an animal is to simply adjust to its method. With cats, you can tell a lot about its intentions just by looking at how its tail is positioned, and how it is approaching, or what it's doing. You can do this with dogs too, and we have no problem with that. It works the same way with cats, however it takes a bit more observation to realize that there is a communicative body language going on because cats are less obvious in their expression. Comparing a cat's expressiveness with a dog's expressiveness is a mistake. They are completely different animals but are similarly emotive but in different ways. The vocalizations are far less a part of a cat's expressiveness when dealing with its owner aside from just trying to get the owner's attention.
Having been around cats for at least 25 or so years, if there's one thing I've figured out, it's that the actual meows are the least important in terms of communication variety. They're vocal because we're vocal, however, they're not telling us anything more than they tell us with body language. They tell us a lot more with what they do, rather than what they say.