Tumblr Thread: Explaining The Language Cats Use With Humans

Author image for Mariel Ruvinsky
Mariel Ruvinsky • Writer and Editor
Apr 26, 2021 11:00 AM EDT

Okay, so, be honest with us, each and every one of you cat owners have tried having a meowing conversation with your cat. There's no shame in it! We all do it. We want to know what's going on in our itty bitty feline's noggin. We want to know what our cats are thinking when they're being jerks and knocking everything over and when they suddenly become all snuggly. So, it's only natural for us to try to speak to them!

But, what do they hear? What does our strange meowing even mean to them? Well, this tumblrthread is about to attempt to explain, and it will do it in the most hilarious cat tumblr way possible. At the end of this list, you will come out both laughing and more educated about the language that cats use with us, and isn't that just purrfect?

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  • 01
    Font - gothicprep Follow i wonder if my pets have like a proper language and when i try to speak back to them im just speaking jargon like for example my cat always speaks to me when I come home and i meow back to her and she'll meow again & even though i don't think twice about it to her it's probably a situation where it's like her, meowing: "im glad you're home" me, meowing back: “tax benefits" her, meowing: “why do u always do this"
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    The most fascinating occurrences to us, honestly, are when our cats speak back and speak back for a while. They must be understanding our meows on some level, right? Otherwise, why would they continue talking back at us? Sometimes, we have whole conversations with them. 

  • 02
    Font - theplushfrog Follow cats actually have a human-specific language. cats don't often meow at each other and seem to use subvocal communications that humans can't hear to chat cat-to-cat. however, cats seem to use what humans would call "shout-until-you're-understood" to speak to humans. so basically, it's more like: "I'M GLAD YOU'RE HOME!" "tax benefits" “NO, I'M GLAD YOU ARE HOME" "waffle iron" "IT'S OKAY. I LOVE YOU TOO, MY DUMB HUMAN"
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    Yeah, we wish so much that we knew what they think we are saying, and generally, we wish we could know what cats are saying to each other. We imagine it being the most hilarious conversations about world domination as well as the ever more important mission of getting your human to give you more snacks. 

  • 03
    Font - defilerwyrm Follow The domestic house cat's wild ancestors have a much harsher voice, too. The going theory is that early cats mimicked human infants which tripped humans' nurturing instincts, and then selective breeding did the rest. We make a big deal over how dogs have developed the ability to understand human expressions and tones (and let's be fair, that is in fact awesome), but cats are possibly the only species that has changed their vocal language to try to communicate with us.
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  • 04
    Rectangle - imayjustbejamesmoriarty Follow what I love about this post (apart from cats because cats are ADORABLE) is the assumption that cats have words for tax benefits.
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  • 05
    Font - beckitty Follow As a bonus to this, certain breeds of cat, such as the siamese and the oriental, have developed a specific voice as well as a specific language to talk to us. They are extremely social cats, and are infamous for being very "chatty". As someone owned by an oriental boy, I can tell you that means he comes over and screams for attention, screams and chirps thank you, tells me all about it, and purrs loud enough to make the windows rattle to show l've got it right. If he gets
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  • 06
    Font - This is all normal for his breed. Some people have theorised that there is a correlation between the higher levels of social behavior and higher levels of vocalisations in these chatty breeds of cat, and some have gone further to suggest it might be to do with greater development of language and social reasoning in their brains as a species.
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  • 07
    Font - valleygOth Follow I have definitely heard my cats meow at each other, I think that factoid may be an old wives tale.
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  • 08
    Font - bettsplendens Follow Just to be clear, cats didn't intentionally mimic human infants. There was some selective pressure in favor of cats who naturally sounded slightly more like infants, because they were more likely to set off the "aww, cute" response that would get them pampered and fed. They also sound slightly different in different countries because people sound different, and there are some anecdotal accounts of cats changing their individual voices to match their human when their h
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  • 09
    Font - thesaltofcarthage Follow adults cat in the wild don't meow to each other. It's primarily a mother-kitten thing. When domestic cats meow at us to communicate, they are usually seeing us as a parent figure: feed me, love me, open the door, fetch my toy. "I love you" is also a parent-child statement, so that's totally valid.
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  • 10
    Font - lazorsandparadox Follow My favorite thing about this situation is that, because cats made up meowing specifically to communicate to humans, both the cat and human are doing the exact same thing. The cat does its best impression of a human so the human knows theyre trying to talk to them, and the human does their best impression of a cat to let the cat know they hear them! It doesnt mean anything to either of you! Youre both literally just meowing at each other, and thats adorable!
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  • 11
    Rectangle - kalmaria Follow Does this means that, in a distant future, cats will be able to talk? Like, human language? Cause l'm here for it 763,001 notes
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aww Single Topic Tumblr hilarious cat adorable tumblr cute language lol silly tumblr thread Cats funny
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