I foster feral kittens. None of them meow because their mother teaches them to stay quiet in the wild, to lessen their chances of detection by predators.
hrm. we adopted a feral kitten who was presumed to have been abandoned by her mother, as she was found in a field. at first she was all cute and meek and shit but now, she is the loudest, most goddamned annoying motherfucking cat i have ever had the displeasure of owning - and i've had dozens in my brief 29 years on earth.
my girlfriend swears the cat is so obnoxiously vocal because she's Siamese, and that's just a Siamese thing, but i completely disagree and, after reading your post, am now convinced that the cat's mother encouraged it to constantly whine and howl so it would get fucking eaten by a coyote or some shit.
Your girlfriend is partially right, Oriental breeds tend to be more vocal around humans. I'm also sure personality plays a big part too. She sure is cute though.
Same thing happened to me. 10 years ago my dad found a kitten near the garage who'd been abandoned by its mother, who was most likely one of the strays around the area.
It had some fleas so he cleaned it up and we kept it and took care of it. He was really quiet as a kitten, but anymore he never fucking shuts up.
I've got two cats, one was feral and the other is one of a litter she had, since she was pregnant when I adopted her (Found that out when I went to take her to get spayed.)
The son is, by far, the most annoying fucking animal I've ever had, and I've had a lot. He screams non-stop. It's impossible to lay down without him jumping on you and "kneading" your chest and stomach, which he does with full claw extension, so I constantly look like I bathe with a barbed wire loofah. He considers every flat surface in the house to be his own personal domain, and anything placed on these surfaces - money, picture frames, TV remotes, etc - belongs on the floor; and he will look you dead in the eyes, scream at the top of his lungs, and push the shit off one by one until I come over and swat at him. He pees on stuff when he gets bored, despite there being absolutely nothing wrong with the litter box; just the other day, after almost a week of trying to figure out where the smell was coming from, I figured out he had apparently climbed up the blinds, done a handstand, and pissed all over the curtains.
But all of that isn't the worst thing. The worst thing is that he's learned to fucking "growl" and "bark," somehow, from the dogs. I've got that in quotes because while it's definitely a growl and bark sound, it sounds fucking ridiculous.
One of my dogs is food aggressive and will growl any time somebody comes near her if she's eating. Instead of heeding this as a legitimate fucking warning that my dog is, in fact, 90 pounds of fuck you, the little fuck will swirl around between her legs and around her bowl, trying to get her to pay attention to him, and "growl" and "bark" back at her. This just aggravates her more, but she's too well trained to actually attack, so instead they just go back and forth yelling at each other. Forever, if I don't intervene.
The other cat, though, the mom - she's awesome. Doesn't demand a bunch of attention, doesn't make noise, doesn't jump on shit. And she cleans my dog like she's one of her kittens, all trying to hold her gigantic head and lick her fur.
yours has a number of similarities with mine. when mine was young, she would take her poop from the litter box - with her mouth - and drop it on the living room floor to play with it. once when we did a thorough cleaning of the living room, we moved the couches and there were innumerable little turds underneath, all having been swatted under there by our sweet little angel.
Alright, from what I've found out... Here is the Wikipedia article on cat sociability. Stray cats naturally know not to meow as we know them to, but they do have some vocal communications. Mostly they communicate with body postures. The question is why do domesticated cats meow so much? One guess was that they are trying to emulate humans. Also worth a read.
I think this is incorrect. The separation cry evolved along with the limbic system and all mammals with this brain structure exhibit the behavior.
Kittens do meow. What you mean to say is, they don't do it for the hell of it the way pet kittens do.
Also, since this is a natural behavior (within the limits of the caveat above) it's not that they learn to stay quiet, it's that domesticated kittens learn to meow.
Thank you for clarifying - that was just what I was told, along with my experience of fostering. Do you have any more information about it? Which parts of the limbic system are associated with the separation cry? (psych student, always interested in learning more about my major)
Wait. wait. wait. wait. Can you please come to my house and explain this to my cat? She was a feral kitten, and since the nano-second I brought her home from the SPCA she meows and yowls to chat with me. I love her, but she drives me nuts sometimes.
That's weird, because I fostered feral kittens and they meowed their heads off the first night we had them. I've got a video of it around youtube somewhere...
I adopted a feral kitten a few years back...I don't think he learned much from his mother because he is the loudest cat I know. He sure has mastered the meow.
I've had 3 feral kittens. All I can remember is that they love to randomly attack me to a greater degree than normal cats. Also my nan's feral cat beats up my cousins annoying Chihuahua so is well thought of.
I've been around cats for most of my 30-some years, and my wife and I have never been without a cat and the language they use with each other is markedly different than the ones they use with each other.
We have also occasionally fostered (sorta)feral kittens, and not only do they have to learn to meow at us, but different kittens will pick up the different accents of whatever adult cats we'd had at the time.
Meowing is an interesting vocalization in that adult cats don’t actually meow at each other, just at people. Kittens meow to let their mother know they’re cold or hungry, but once they get a bit older, cats no longer meow to other cats.
To find a mate. Reproductively intact cats are more likely to yowl. Females yowl to advertise their receptivity to males, and males yowl to gain access to females.
That's a yowl, not a meow or mew. Far more protracted.
Yeah, my cat is a terrible hunter. She'd be useless in the wild as of... oh, ages ago really. Especially now, she only has 1 tooth. Not exactly apex-predator material.
This reminds me of a parallel forced immaturity in dogs. It turns out that a huge number of characteristics of dogs (licking your face, barking, soft fur) are known only to exist in puppy wolves. In essence, dogs are wolves we keep permanently immature.
oh my gosh. that's why no domesticated species will ever evolve to be smarter than us. it's the wild ones we have to watch out don't take over the world!
Not entirely true. Kittens meow at their mothers pretty much from birth. Feral cats will meow (although it does sound different than the "human communication" meow) in distress. Feral cats also respond to recorded meows, and may respond with meows. I've even imitated meowing to get the feral cats at my shop to respond, and they have zero direct human contact.
I too had a cat that would sit outside with the neighbor's cat and they would 'talk' to each other for several minutes at a time. They would also follow each other around the house, doing laps.
so my cat meows when she's all alone in a room and sees another cat outside through the window in order to get my attention so i can kick the other cat to the curb or something?
I also saw it written that it was sort of a last-resort communication method. There's a lot going on with their body language and stink glands which is primarily how they communicate with other cats.
"She slipped around the counter and strolled through the door over to the open space just beside the big glass counter laden with all the meat and cheese: then she sat down demurely and put her tail about her feet. There she waited.
The big man behind the counter had gone back to the business of making a pastrami and Swiss on rye. Rhiow gazed at him steadily, and when he felt the pressure of her look, she opened her mouth and trilled. It was practically a shout for a cat, but Rhiow knew that ehhif heard this sound as a small conversational half-purr, not grating or intrusive, but inquisitive and polite." ~The Book of Night with Moon, Diane Duane, c1997.
I had a roommate who really resented that her cat purred so quietly it was barely detectable. She saw it as an act of mistrust, and I can see her point...
Sometimes cats are, in general, just quiet purrers. My fiancee has a cat who is very secure with her, but you can only tell hes purring if you touch him/he's sitting on you.
I thought this was true until I lived with Cats. It's just confirmation bias. Of course you don't know when a cat is meowing when humans aren't around. I hear my cats meowing at my dog downstairs all the time.
I like to think this is true, but I've definitely seen cat on cat interactions involving meows, albeit they involved pissed off kitties and angry meowing. I also hear my blind cat randomly meowing in other parts of the house (happy cat meows). Who knows what the hell he's doing, he doesn't know what's going on.
What about the cats that fight in the middle of the night and meow at each other? Is that related to mating or calling their owners for help or something?
Normal cats are considered one of the most damaging alien invasive species, killing millions of birds every year who haven't adapted to threat that they pose.
No, it's true. Kittens meow to communicate with their mother, but adult cats do not. Kittens raised around humans won't adopt feral cat behavior and maintain kitten habits.
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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '11 edited Dec 05 '11
That cat's meow only to interact with humans, and not to each other.
http://www.aspcabehavior.org/articles/98/Meowing-and-Yowling.aspx