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Those who don’t like cats or live with cats often make a rather daft assumption about them: That the sounds they make are meaningless! Those of us who share a home with a cat or two know better! How could their sounds not have meaning?
Cats have such a variety of different vocalizations, each with its own wide range of variation. How could this be meaningless?
When we think of cat sounds, most of us think of one thing. We call it meow. The Japanese say nyaa. This is how we interpret the sound that our pet cats make. Oddly enough, cats do not often “meow” to other cats! It is a sound that seems to be reserved mostly for humans. It also seems as if cats were using this sound on humans in ancient times.
Ancient Egyptian Word for Cat
While neither English speakers or Japanese speakers derived our word for our feline friends from the sounds they make, the Ancient Egyptians may have, at least in part.
Felis silvestris lybyca, the African wildcat that our modern domestic cats are derived from, must have been meowing all over the place. The Egyptians interpreted the sound as miu, which has also been rendered as mau, miy, or miit, depending on the source (but let’s stick with mau). This was their word for cat.
The Egyptians are not alone. In Thailand, the cat is meo and in China, mao. Onomatopoeic names are not uncommon, then, and really just underscore how often out cats meow at us, all over the world.
Cats were revered, and even worshiped, in Egyptian society. In fact, during the reign of the pharaohs, killing a cat was a crime punishable by death.
It is doubtful that this reverence derived from plaintive meows coming from thousands of Egyptian cats.
How Do Cats Meow?
The basic sound of the meow, or the nyaa, is nothing more than a vocalization the cat makes by opening its mouth and slowly closing it.
They can’t create different vowel sounds or consonant sounds, so any change they make to the sound has to do with the strength of the air passing over the vocal cords or how slowly they close their mouth, or both.
The Siamese, known for its loud vocalizations, is the only cat with its own unique accent. Although you will hear individual cats with their an odd meow sound, most cats’ meows sound remarkably similar, owing to the hardware they have for producing sounds.
But Why Do Cats Meow?
I don’t mean why do they meow to us. We know why cats do this, at least those of us who know our cats know why they are meowing, most of the time.
The different inflections and timings can mean demand, complaint, confusion, or simple greeting or acknowledgment.
But here we have a sound cats are making to humans which their wild cousins hardly never, if ever make! What sound is this that is part of a cat’s repertoire, yet is almost exclusively reserved for humans?
Cats that are just hanging around with other adult cats rarely meow at one another. Yet, there are other sounds, like that little cat trill or chirp of greeting or affection, or the purr, that they use with each other and with us. And of course, the hiss, or the growl, may be used by any pissed-off cat toward any creature.
Wild cats didn’t just decide to invent a new sound with which to influence humans. Regardless of whether an adult cat would routinely use such a sound with another adult cat, or whether wild cats would use it, it has to be a part of the innate range of vocalizations that a cat possesses. Cats make many other sounds besides meow!
We humans make certain vocalizations when are infants. Infants cry. This is the only way they can communicate. Listen to a litter of kittens, and you will make the connection.
The cat’s meow grows out of the sounds kittens make to signal distress. To call to mom. Momma cat responds to this sound just as a human mother responds to the sound of baby crying.
We humans see our cats as babies, much of the time. I think you see why cats associated with humans would retain and then develop the sound they were born with. Humans respond to it!
As their humans respond to the different meow sounds they make, a cat will modify and develop their own ways of meowing, but it still tends to fall within a range.
Whether you want to believe there is a true language involved, or that an individual cat simply learns by trial and error how to make the right sounds to get what they want, they certainly do talk to us enough.
As well, while some cats meow quite often, if not constantly, others may not meow very much at all. Certain breeds, such as Siamese, are more noisy than others. Then there is even that strange silent meow that happens from time to time.
You know, when your cat just looks up at you and mouths a silent meow, as if he’s suddenly developed a severe case of laryngitis? My cat does this when very hungry, as if to say, “I’m too weak with hunger to even make a sound.”
Cats are also known to do this when they know they cannot be heard! Have you ever mouthed a word at someone, perhaps through a window, expecting them to read your lips? Do you find it remarkable that a cat knows we can read their lips?
Or, at least, they know that just making the motions will work, at least, if they have gotten the appropriate reaction from us in the past.
The Secret Language of Cats
In her fascinating and almost astonishingly thorough book, The Secret Language of Cats, language expert Sussane Schötz delves into the fascinating world of cat vocalizations to help cat owners understand the meanings behind meows, purrs, and other sounds.
Schötz, a phonetics expert, is a professor at Lund University in Sweden. There, a long-standing research program is proving that cats do use vocal communication with each other and with their human caretakers.
Schötz offers a downright astonishing course in the phonetic study of cat sounds, something you may be surprised to know even exists.
Understanding how your cat communicates can not only improve your relationship with them but also help professionals like veterinarians offer better, more effective care to our feline best friends.
Schötz reveals that cat sounds are often divided into three main categories suggested by Mildred Moelk, who was the first to publish a phonetic study of cat sounds in 1944. According to Shotz, through careful listening, Moelk organized cat sounds into sixteen phonetic patterns divided into three main categories.
These three basic sounds are:
1. Sounds produced with the mouth closed, like purring and trilling.
2. Sounds produced with the mouth opened and gradually closing like meowing, howling, and yowling.
3. Sounds produced with a tense mouth held in the same position lie growling, snarling, hissing, spitting, chattering, and chirping.
Look at the seemingly short list above. It reminds us of the vast repertoire of vocalizations our cats possess.
The assumption is, of course, that all these different sounds have different communication functions, like greeting, acknowledgment, and confusion. And then there are the big three: request, demand, and complaint!
Early studies used cats in laboratory conditions where the cats were caged and frightened and perhaps underfed or starved. Therefore, the sounds made were not a good sampling of the kind of sounds a cat makes in a more natural circumstance.
Most of the sounds these poor cats made were sounds of desperation!
Phonetics, by the way, is the study of the physical properties of speech.
Now, we have the advantage of more studies being conducted in humane conditions; even in the actual homes of the cats. These studies have been done by behavioral researchers, zoologists, and, surprisingly to me, linguists and phoneticians.
Schotz provides a brief overview of the most common cat sounds and I will provide a summary of them here. You may recognize quite a few of these from your own cat!
Lets get into the basic sounds here, but for more, go get the book and dive in. It’s really an enlightening and fascinating read!
♦ Purring
A very low-pitched, sustained, quiet and regular sound produced during inhalation and exhalation. Schotz provides phonetic symbols for the sound but I assume you know what purring sounds like!
Purring Purpose: It is a commonly held myth that cats only purr when content. They purr when content, hungry, stressed, or even in pain. Cats also purr when giving birth and dying.
when your cat purrs, it doesn’t necessarily mean “I’m content.” Schotz suggest that it means something more like “I am no threat” and “keep on doing what you’re doing.”
♦ Trilling
A trill is a sound somewhere between a purr and a meow that is relatively short. It sounds like a rolled R.
The trill is a favorite of cat people. It’s the sound our cat makes when greeting us or ackowledging us. Sometimes, they trill when we put their food down. Sometimes when we give them a rub on the head.
Schotz separates the trill into the further categories of the chirrup (high-pitched), the grunt (low-pitched and short), and the murmur (soft and nasal without the trilling sound).
♦ Meow Sounds
Meows are sounds that cats make most often with humans. As I mentioned above, it’s unusual to hear a cat meow at another cat. My cat Isha, however, didn’t get the memo. She meows at little Petey all the time. For his part, he seems to have no clue what in the world she wants.
Schötz separates the meow into four categories, the mew, the squeak, the moan, and the meow. The last may be confusing. Think of it as the traditional, stereotypical meow.
a. The mew is a high-pitched meow. Kittens often use it to get their mother’s help. Adult cats sometimes use it to get our attention or our help.
b. The squeak is raspy, nasal, and high-pitched. These can be friendly requests for attention.
c. The moan is a low meow used by an anxious or stressed cat. It’s also used by a cat demanding something from its loyal subject.
d. The (regular?) meow is the characteristic miau or mow sound. This is often used on humans to get our attention.
e. The trill-meow is a combination fo a trill an a meow sound.
♦ The Howl
The howl is a yowl, moan, or anger wail. This is a sound made by an angry cat, one who is feeling aggressive, defensive, etc. It’s often combined with growling and it tends to be a long sequence of sounds with varying pitch and loudness.
♦ The Growl
The growl is a warning sound used to signal danger or to scare off an enemy. The hiss and spit is similar, but it can also be used when a cat is startled by someone (i.e. an apparent enemy). That means your cat may hiss at you when it doesn’t know you’re there and you sneak up on her. It doesn’t mean she hate you. She’s just surprised.
♦ The Snarl
The snarl is that dreaded scream or pain shriek our cats let out when we step on their paw or tail, something that happens all too often as since they simply MUST stand right under our feet at all times. Snarls are sometimes made during an actual fight or by injured or sick cats.
♦ The Chirp and Chatter
The chirp and chatter is that sound your cat makes when it’s hunting or observing prey like birds, rodents or insects. Cats produce different prey sounds for different prey in what seems to be an attempt to imitate the prey calls, like the chatter (teeth cattering) or the chirp, directed at birds or rodents.
While this may seem like a lot of information, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Shotz offers much more detail and explanation, going into not just the sounds themselves, but just what particular situations they are used for. It’s a must-read for anyone who really wants to understand their cat on a whole new level.