The Cat Speaks English

[ElishevaBarsabe]

We "adopted" two kittens in October, 2003: one gray and white (but not striped) about 9 weeks old and the other a Siamese-looking, blue-eyed sweetie who is probably of mixed heritage who was about 10 weeks old at the time.

Right from the first day at our house, the Siamese, named Ursula, seemed to understand the English language. She would respond to sentences like "Ursula, dear, please get off the chair." by getting off the chair or "If you are hungry, go check your bowl." by going to the mat where we set out the cats' food.

These responses, however, could be explained (even if an obedient cat is rather odd in itself).

One day, however, both my husband and I were watching the television, when Ursula suddenly jumped into the reclining chair and attacked the neck rest while growling. Then, just as suddenly, she settled down as if she had done nothing.

My husband laughed and said to the cat, "Why did you do that?"

She looked him directly and made a series of noises that sounded very distinctly like "I don't know." spoken by someone who doesn't quite have the proper tongue and lip arrangement for speech. Then she jumped off the chair and walked away.

My husband and I stared at each other for a moment. I said, "Did you hear that?" He said that he had. Fearing that I was finally losing the last of my sanity, I asked him what he had heard. He answered, "She said 'I don't know."

Then, not wanting to believe it, we agreed that she couldn't have spoken. Right? She couldn't have.

But it was a mighty strange incident.

 

[Anonymous]

Cats can sound incredibly human, I swear I've heard them talk myself, although not in context. There are well documented cases of carnivores mimicking human speech - several dogs and a seal, I think - but I'd put my money on the cats to be the ones to start to really communicate. I love cats, but they freak me out, sometimes.

Oh, and I once heard a sheep say "hello there." Jumped out of my skin. No, I'm not joking, I'd actually turned round to reply to whoever it was, and there was no-one but the sheep.

 

[Electric_Monk]

For some reason I'm fascinated by the idea of talking cats, I think it comes from being a cat person always wondering why they act like they do I must admit, I occasionally ask our cat directly if she can speak, but have yet to receive a response...There does seem to be the odd legend/folklore/etc. of talking cats though, so it makes you wonder if perhaps occasionally cats come along with the capacity for it...

 

[escargot]

Big Son and I were teasing Rocky the dog one day when Rocky, apparently fed up with our childishness, turned to me and growled' MOTHER!'

Cracked us up.

 

[GNC]

Anyone remember the classic letter in FT where a bloke called Dave was sitting watching TV with his friend's big dog, and the dog lazily looked over at him and said, "Alright, Dave?"

 

[Electric_Monk]

Anyone remember the classic letter in FT where a bloke called Dave was sitting watching TV with his friend's big dog, and the dog lazily looked over at him and said, "Alright, Dave?"

I can't think of anything more amusing that the dog could have said I'm sitting here at work, giggling silently, I hope nobody notices.

 

[sunsplash1]

On balance, I think that some cats, attempt to sound like us. My cat Sierra when distressed meows out my first name. I am not the only one who thinks this.

Companion animals are pretty wonderful beings.

 

[escargot]

My daughter was at her mate's house one day and they were watching a fillum which featured a certain American leading lady.

The resident big dog did one of those long dog-yawns, which came out as 'Andieeee McDowwellllllll'!

Yup, it was she!

 

[Mythopoeika]

I've experienced this phenomenon, and I'm convinced it's more common than we're all led to believe.
I'm also convinced that if cats and dogs had the right kind of mouths, some of them might even be able to hold a rudimentary conversation.
There's a good reason why they might understand human language at some level: socialisation.
We take these pets and train them from birth, and they are around us 24/7. So is it too far-fetched for some of this humanity to rub off on them?

 

[Anonymous]

I'm a firm believer in certain birds speaking meaningfully. And, lets face it, pets DO have rudimentary conversations with us, even without attempting speech. I think a cat or dog can express its needs and preferences much more effectively than, say, a human baby

 

[Min Bannister]

Oh, and I once heard a sheep say "hello there." Jumped out of my skin. No, I'm not joking, I'd actually turned round to reply to whoever it was, and there was no-one but the sheep.

Sheep can sound very human. I used to work on a farm and I've lost count of the amount of times I was fooled by a sheep, thinking it was a person.

 

[escargot]

An old boyfriend of mine worked in an office full of recreational farters.

Now and then someone would hear their name spoken and say, 'Yes?' to which came the reply 'Him as speaks got no teeth!'

This was considered hilarious.

 

[giantrobot1]

An old boyfriend of mine worked in an office full of recreational farters.

Now and then someone would hear their name spoken and say, 'Yes?' to which came the reply 'Him as speaks got no teeth!'

This was considered hilarious.

Classy.

There's been a lot of research done on the vocabulry of various animals, with parrots being surprisingly smart.

Of course this isn't news to a pet owner - especially in the case of dogs, who understand words like 'walk' or 'food'.

When they learn to say things, that's when we should start worrying...

"Four legs good, two legs bad..." :eek!!!!:

 

[Anonymous]

I was at the aviary in Leeds Castle, in Kent, and I happened upon a cockatoo in a cage. I was the only person in front of the cage and I was indulging in some gentle ribbing of the bird to the effect that it was a fairly lame conversationalist. It then talked back, in a chatty manner. Really. I can't quite remember the words as I was so shocked, but it was something about the fact that I would be a lame conversationlist too if I was stuck in a cage all day with little stimulation. It sounded pissed off, and not a little sininster.

There were a few other people around talking and the bird was fairly quiet, so i lost most of what it said. I hurried off quickly, rather dazed. I told my girlfriend, who said that imagined it, or was going mad. I agreed. But now you make me wonder....

 

[TulipTree]

Here is a story from Paranormal Phenomena.

The Talking Cat of Ingleside District
Witnessed by two boys early in the morning on their paper route, a cat is approached by a retired police dog who is a known cat killer. (This was the 1950s when dogs were allowed to run loose and animal cruelty laws either weren't in place or enforced) According to the story, the cat was able to distract the dog by "speaking" and get away.

Then I heard the strangest thing in my entire life; for while the cat sat there like an Egyptian statue it began to "speak" in a strange and scary cat voice, and each and every word was clearly enunciated: "Gooooooo awaaaaaaay." And again "Gooooooo awaaaaaaay."

 

[PeniG]

The late Bast used to occasionally say "milk" and "Mom;" or, more accurately, "Mmmmiiiiilk" and "mo-um." I think a lot of these cases are verbal simulacra. Just as our visual systems are conditioned to pick out faces, our audial systems are conditioned to turn sound into meaning. This is why birds, who can't make labials, can be taught to say sentences full of labials coherently - the bird does its best, and the human brain does the rest. The phrase "I don't know" is composed of vowels and rhythms that cats make naturally; all that is required is a human brain to sort it into actual words.

Even if I'm right, though, it isn't necessarily true that the cat (or dog) is never attempting verbal communication. They are after all with us a lot of the time, and we insist on speaking to them as if they spoke English. A well-socialized pet may well attempt to meet us part way and attempt to use noise to communicate. In my case, Bast would say "milk" with much the same inflection as I would say when asking her if she wanted some. It is far from impossible that she had associated the sound with the treat. "Mom" however was probably purely a verbal simulacrum, since in our conversations with/for her we used the word "Mommy" to refer to me.

As for cats being obediant - a cat will be obediant when it wants to be or when it sees an advantage. Some cats like to please people for the sake of pleasing them. Cats and dogs are also excellent at reading body language, a phenomenon called "unconscious cueing" by scientists. The deal is, when you say "Get off the table," you, as a word-oriented communicator, are focusing on the sense in the sounds; but the cat, as a motion-oriented communicator, is focusing on your body language, which sends the same message. A friendly and intelligent cat may, over time, learn to associate words with meanings via body language, and may also realize that humans read body language very badly, and learn to verbalize in order to communicate with you better. Domestic animals know perfectly well how much they depend on us, and are highly motivated to understand us.

 

[Anonymous]

You could be right Peni. It could be verbal simulacrum. On several occasions my kitten of 18 years has come out with some good ones. He has called me by what sounds like my nickname and of course there is the mom and da sounds as well as ME OUT and ME OUT NOW, sometimes he seems to respond to questions with NO or REA (yea or yes?) Wonderful creatures are cats.

 

[Anonymous]

I was at the aviary in Leeds Castle, in Kent, and I happened upon a cockatoo in a cage. I was the only person in front of the cage and I was indulging in some gentle ribbing of the bird to the effect that it was a fairly lame conversationalist. It then talked back, in a chatty manner. Really. I can't quite remember the words as I was so shocked, but it was something about the fact that I would be a lame conversationlist too if I was stuck in a cage all day with little stimulation. It sounded pissed off, and not a little sininster.

There were a few other people around talking and the bird was fairly quiet, so i lost most of what it said. I hurried off quickly, rather dazed. I told my girlfriend, who said that imagined it, or was going mad. I agreed. But now you make me wonder....

Oh. My. God. I don't get much out of mine except "hello" and "I love you". Thankfully.

 

[PeniG]

The cat telling the dog to go away reminds me of an anecdote I ran across when researching parrots for *The Treasure Bird* a number of years ago. Cats and parrots, for obvious reasons, are an uneasy household mix, and when one cat owner acquired a parrot (an African gray, I believe, but don't quote me) he tried to keep them separated. Well, if you've got a cat, you know how that went. The cat gets into the bird's room and starts stalking it, and the bird says: "Hello." This stops the cat short. He leaves stalking mode and goes into "new person" mode, then greets the parrot like a person, not like a new pet or a visitor. For the duration of their shared occupancy, the cat - who evidently equated speech with humans - behaved around the parrot as if the parrot were a person and not a prey animal.

I have not the facilities or cash up front to buy exotic birds, but I was seriously tempted when writing this book, and several times went to pet stores in order to get some interaction with them. I fell in love with an African gray that would put his head down to be scratched and coo. But it was impossible - Eric the Mighty Hunter would have heard that coo, identified him as a pigeon, and that would have been that - an $800 cat snack. Even now that Eric is gone, it would be irresponsible for me to bring home any bird that could not already say: "Bad cat!"

 

[Anonymous]

'True Confessions' moment ...

Peni, your post has reminded me of a mate back in my university days. A nice chap who, after reading The Illuminatus Trilogy and smoking a bit too much of the devil's dandelion, would go into pet shops and whisper to the parrots "Here Kitty Kitty, Here Kitty Kitty." (I, of course, disapproved. I also thought it hilarious, at that time.)

 

[Anonymous]

Interestingly - or perhaps insanely - I read a Whitley Streiber book a few years back which concerned his conversation with an 'angelic presence'. As an aside amongst many other revelations, this 'visitor' tells him that millions of years after the demise of mankind, some birds become intelligent and form a civilisation. Now, WS may possibly be as mad as a hatstand, but maybe these avine chatterboxes are just warming up for the big one. And the cats want a piece of the action.

Maybe not.

 

[Anonymous]

Animal talking

I think a lot of people underestimate animals intelligence.

I was a Zoology Major and over the years I've had dozens of dogs. My wife used to raise show dogs. so, we're quite used to their normal abilities. Currently we have four - three are of the average intelligence variety (well, okay - two are average, one somewhat less so ).

However, the fourth (Puddin') is very smart. She does things dogs aren't normally considered capable.

One of the differances between sentience and instinctual intelligence is Cognitive Reasoning. Basically, this means animals can't Reason an answer out. They either know what to do in a given situation or can learn by trial and error. They are NOT supposed to be able to figure things out by leaps in logic.

Puddin' seems to be able to. In Example: We were playing fetch, she had picked two toys - a frayed stringy rope and a fluffy pillow toy - I was alternating throwing each. At one point I threw both. She ran to one and carried it to the second. Not being able to pick the second up, she was in a delema. At this point she did something odd. She sat both toys beside each other and stared at them for maybe 30 seconds, glancing back and forth. Then she picked up the rope toy and placed it on the pillow, picked up the pillow and brought both back.

If it had happened fast I wouldn't have thought too much about it. But, I watched her think about it. She had a definate thought process: A problem presented itself, she calculated and came to a workable answer. Dogs aren't supposed to be able to do that. In fact, few animals have that capacity: Humans, some Primates, and Dolphins are pretty much it.

Puddin' also understands visual commands such as a pointed finger - every other dog I've seen will just stare at a persons finger if they point at something. Puddin' looks to where I am pointing. She understands fairly complex verbal commands - I think better than my son , She can operate a doorknob, and she house-trained our other dogs by herself.

These aren't her only oddities, just some examples.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Well, dogs have been known to do some pretty intelligent things to rescue people or whatever - a certain amount of cognitive reasoning must take place.

 

[Electric_Monk]

I thought crows (or some other similar bird) were meant to be quite intelligent, recent scientific observations of them working together to solve problems (such as pulling up bin bags from food from the bottom of bins) and making tools (making hooks from provided sticks of metal, then using them to pull food or somesuch out of a tube. It makes sense to me, they look like they might know something you don't when they look at you

 

[naSTEe]

without going into to much detail..i have a had a dog,,,and now an African Grey Parrot..both displayed OBVIOUS intelligence but the Parrot is so smart ..i know its cleverer than my 2 year old,,,and i've seen her outsmart my wife,,her (the parrot) vocabulary is apparently limitless, definate sentiant sentence construction and more than able to communicate her wants and needs,,also it has to be said Parrots are a$$holes, at best "cheeky",,but they know this and thrive on it,,all the time, thrilling in mischief and possesing a "wicked" sense of humour..all ever so human traits????

 

[Anonymous]

Our GSD x (Tarot) was one of the most lovely and intelligent dogs we have ever owned we sadly lost last year, however, this story took place about three years ago.


We were sitting on our upstairs patio/balcony, she had come up to join us sitting in the sun. One of our other dogs is a lurcher and sadly not known for the wattage that glows in her brain. The lurcher had gone outside downstairs looking for us. We called to her and she stood looking up whining. We called again and she thought she might just be able to climb up the wall - wrong. I turned to Tarot and said to her "go downstairs, get Skye (the lurcher) and bring her up here". She cocked her head on one side and I told her again to bring Skye up to us.

She then went off downstairs, round the side of the house, barked once at Skye. Skye then followed her and Tarot brought her up to us.

This was just one of many incidents that made us believe she very well understood what was said to her.

 

[Creamstick1]

My cat Monkeybear definitely understands English - she has her 'baby' - a small black furry toy mouse (she feeds it by putting it in her dinner bowl, then after a few minutes, into her biscuits bowl, then balances it on the edge of her water dish. She then grooms it and puts it to bed in her cat-bed). If I tell her 'go get your baby', she'll run around the house looking for it, then bring it into the room and put it to bed.

If she looks fed up, I'll tell her to go get a toy, and we can play - her favourite toy is a tub af 1,000 cable ties of all different colours that we bought her for xmas one year (I swear it's true - I was fed up with her opening my drawer and stealing mine) - so she'll open the tub by sliding back the lid and getting one out. Sometimes she even remembers to slide the lid back.

If we get her a different type of cat food than her favourite (Felix trays - cod & haddock flavour), she'll turn her nose up at it. So I'll tell her that if she eats a little of it, she can get her proper dinner - she'll walk straight over to her dish, eat a mouthfull, and come back over, sitting patiently for her proper food.

If she's raking through the bin (she's found a way to open the lid of the pedal-bin), and I hear her from another room, I'll shout to her to get out of the bin - next thing, she'll appear at my feet looking like sweetness and light (as if).

The cutest thing she does, is when she's sleeping at the bottom of our bed and can't get comfortable, she'll come up and cuddle into me (I give off a great amount of body-heat). If she still can't get comfy, then she'll get up, get her baby, put it in her place (so we're not lonely without her) and go sleep in her cat-bed.

 

[Anonymous]

My mom witnessed this at her friends house:

Her friends daughter sings opera and was home for a visit while my mom was also there. Her friend also has an African Gray parrot.

She asked her daughter to sing something for my mom, which she did, and the parrot immediatly whistled exactly the same thing. (No biggie) The parrot then whistled something new which the daughter repeated. This went back and forth for several minutes(to everyones amusement) until the parrot did something particularly difficult, to which the daughter replied, "there's no way I can do that."

The parrot said, "Ha-ha, I win."

 

[RainyOcean]

I have always wondered if cats could actually speak english but just chose not to most of the time.

Anyway, when I walk into the room and say "Hi Rajah" she meows back at me as if to say hi back. My dad finds this really amusing.

When I was little and first started school my mom told me when I came home that our cat Jenney had said "Where's Kristin?" I don't really believe this, because I think my mom would have made a bigger deal out of hearing the cat talk, but I thought I would mention it anyway.

 

[gellatly68]

As an addendum to peni's entry on verbal simulacra above, I will say that the human brain is marvellously adept at recognising patterns, whether they be of a visual or aural nature. The classic visual one is of the picture that's both a goblet and two people's profiles. As far as recognising and interpreting aural signals goes, an excellent example occurs when you go abroad, particularly for an extended period of time. As you walk down a street, you may suddenly, and unexpectedly, hear someone behind you speaking in your mother tongue. You turn round, and there is just one of the locals, chatting away in his/her own language. Your brain has 'caught' a part of the conversation, and has then 'translated' it into a comprehensible pattern, in this case your own language. This has happened to me several times, and unnerved me initially....I began to think that everyone could actually speak English, and were just speaking 'foreign' to annoy me!