BBC News article here.
Is there really any cat owner that does not know this?
[hijack]reminds me of a study about gender differences in toddlers in getting over an obstacle. The children were put in front of a barrier higher than they were, with a parent on the other side watching them try to get over. (I think that ostensibly the purpose was to study how long it would take for them to climb over the barrier but I might be mistaken.)
The girls got over faster on average than the boys. Because they were more successful in getting their parents to lift them over than the boys were.
I don’t know what this “soliciting purr” with the high-pitched noise embedded sounds like. I have three cats. They just yowl when they’re hungry, and it is indeed VERY unpleasant, but there’s no purring involved. It’s just a really loud, long, freaky meow. And it’s funny they make comparisons to a human baby’s cry: one of cats yowls non-stop whenever he’s in the car carrier, and once when we were in the car with him we went through a McD’s drive-through. After ordering the food, the voice in the speaker asked if we needed anything for our baby. She said at the window that it sounded like we had a crying baby in the car.
So, did he haz cheezeburger?
I’m assuming it’s what I’ve called a “trill” or “chirrup” slid into the end of a purr, sort of sounding like they’re asking a question/begging. “Puuuuurrrr-rrrppp?” is a good representation. I’ve heard cats do that when they think potentially good food is near or that their human is near their food source.
Two of our cats yell in a totally unmistakable way when it’s afternoon can time. Their dry food dishes almost always have something in there to nibble on. But if, by chance they’re empty in the morning, only Cuervo will let me know.
The special purr has nothing to do with it though. Cuervo, who has no voice, will purr loudly while licking the top of my head and using his front claw to pull the cover off of me. No tact whatsoever, that one.
Any human who lives with cats knows that cats are excellent communicators. I think that’s part of the appeal of cats…they clearly want to talk to us, and since they can’t really speak, they have to pull the covers off of us in order to tell us to GET UP AND GIMME MY BREAKFAST ALREADY DAMMIT! And they expect us to understand them instantly. One of our cats has trained my husband to throw a toy when he wants to play fetch. Notice that I said that my husband is trained…the cat isn’t trained.
Next up, they’ll be running a study to show that cats know how to get their humans to rub their bellies and scritch under their chins.
Ariel doesn’t make any sound when she wants breakfast. Instead, she hops up onto bed and, with her head just an inch away from my face, stares intently until I wake up, licking her chops every once in a while. Obviously, she’s figured out that I wake up right quick if I open my eyes to find a very hungry cat is staring at me and licking her lips.
My current working conditions with long spells away from home do not permit me to have a cat - oh so sad.
However, when I was a cat/cats controlled human, I had no need for any pseudoscience to tell me when feeding time had arrived.
Steeler (named of course for the Pittsburgh Steelers) and Tala (which means “havoc” in old Spanish) each had their own way of signaling that feeding time had arrived.
Steeler dragged/pushed his bowl into the middle of whatever room there was a human occupant - pretty obvious.
Tala would sit by his bowl and yodel as only Siamese cats can to let me know that the bowl was empty.
Irks me to no end that likely tons of research money was spent recording catty “language” for such a pointless study.
Any cat worth his/her tuna kibbles has sussed out how to alert a human butler to provide food before it reaches six months old!
Tikva yowls really loudly until I go get the food; when she sees that I’m approaching the correct area, she starts chirruping excitedly and rubbing against my leg. She also dashes back and forth the five feet between the food box and her bowl, in case I loose my way or something.
Mystery is generally a very quiet cat, and is she 3wants something she’ll come up to you and bump your leg. When she really wants something, she has this really weird high-pitched meowl.
Said another way, it turns out that cats know how to do what cats do for a living.