Prrrt? Prrrt. What's he saying?

Factual Questions
21

Indeed: with limited vocabulary, context is everything.

Our (late) cat Josephine had a word that went “Prrr-eow?”. It best translates into English as “Please?”
When said while looking at the door, it meant please let me out. When said while looking at her bowl it meant please feed me. When said while looking at your lap it meant may I sit in your lap (and in later years, pleas pick me up because I am too old to jump up there).
The weird part was when she started making a noise for “thank you”.

22

The only time I get a ‘thank you’ is every two or three times I fill his food dish. He gives me a brief head-butt.

23

Clearly he’s read Skinner. A variable schedule of reinforcement is better than constant reinforcement. :smiley:

24

Are you sure he’s not just voicing a shampoo preference?

25

Prrrrrt means, “I cannot understand the noises* you make in my direction. Either learn to speak cat or STFU.”

  • I mistyped this at first, and autoerror changed it to “mouses”. iGulp!
26

On a related note, why does a cat want to rub his head on your hand? I have two cats, a male and a female; the female not so much but the male constantly. I suspect it may have to do with marking you with his scent.

27

When we took in my late father’s elderly siamese she took to constant, loud vocalizing that seemed to mean, “I don’t like this wallpaper/paint!” There was talk of renting her out to remodelers. She has been gone a couple years, I think I finally have the ptsd under control.

28

As for cats saying “thank you,” I have a hard time telling whether the cat is saying “thank you for feeding me” or “took you long enough, dammit.”

Yes, they are marking you as theirs, but they also do it because they like it.

29

I associate marking territory with rubbing with the gape of the mouth. This one butts with the top of his head.

30

Yeah, that’s affection. Cats have scent glands all over the head, but a lot of that rubbing/marking is affection as well - they are reinforcing social bonds by spreading their scent and if you were a cat you’d be returning the favor simultaneously. But head butts are pretty much just an affectionate gesture, not scent-marking.

When I first got my second kitten from the humane society to keep the first company ( who was a whirlwind that needed a playmate to save my sanity ), I wasn’t sure how much he’d warm up to me. He was a more than usually standoffish kitten, not unfriendly so much as indifferent ( he’s so blasé he falls asleep in the scale at the vet office and they used to use him to “cat test” new dogs at the shelter ). But on the third day I had him he gave me a friendly little head butt and I knew that wasn’t going to be a worry. He’s turned out to be very affectionate - but only towards me and his adopted sibling, he’ still supremely indifferent to most others.