Good answer, Blake, well put.
Your humorous observation about Swedish cats made me wonder if I’d ever seen foreign cats meowing to domestic ones; & then I realized that I haven’t seen cats meow all that much to each other, mostly just to people.
So, I found this at the Wiki page on “cat communication:”
"The ‘meow’ (also spelled ‘miau’, ‘miow’ or ‘miao’) is a vocalization used by kittens to signal a request to their mother. Adult cats do not normally meow to each other, and so the meowing to humans that domesticated cats exhibit is likely partly an extension of the use of this plaintive signal, this time to an unrelated caretaker of a different species.[2] When communicating with humans, adult cats express variations of this tone to demand food or attention, register complaints and convey bewilderment. A slight alteration in tone, pace or punctuation changes the meaning.[3]
While cats occasionally vocalize to one another with purrs, growls, and screams, they generally communicate with one another through body language. When preparing to fight an adversary or to frighten one away, cats can emit long, articulated meows. Most communications recognized as “meow” are specifically for human interaction.[4]"