Just like a Dream

koryos:

Someone asked me why cats meow on their owners and luckily for them I have done an entire academic project on this, which the above video was part of. (Note: I am not the girl in the beginning. Also, don’t worry, to produce the more negative meows were at worse mildly irritated with fierce cuddling; one cat was placed in a shower to make it think it was going to get a bath, but the shower was never turned on.)

There are five basic meow categories cats use with their owners.

• Agonistic: an aggressive meow, basically saying, “back off!”
• Distress: basically, “help me! I’m scared!”
• Food-related: fairly obvious, but it’s asking for food
• Obstacle: asking for the owner to help with an obstacle, like a closed door or window
• Afilliative: produced when the cat wants a petting session or during a petting session

Based on my own personal experience, I’d add a sixth meow-to-owner category, contact calls (that random meowing your cat does until you respond to it, also the back-and-forth vocalizations owners sometimes have with their cats) but there is no official literature on it yet.

Cats also use slightly different vocalizations with other cats, namely that they mainly meow at their mothers as kittens and as adults rarely meow to each other except when in heat/in an aggressive situation.

Note that this analysis is also limited specifically to meows, which are sounds the cat produces with a sustained open mouth. Other sounds may include purrs, trills, hissing, and spitting (see here for a study on all cat sound types).

Papers to look at:

Brown, K., Buchwald, J., Johnson, J., & Mikolich, D. (1978). Vocalization in the cat and kitten. Developmental psychobiology, 11(6)

McComb, K., Taylor, A. M., Wilson, C., & Charlton, B. D. (2009). The cry embedded within the purr. Current Biology, 19(13)

Nicastro, N. (2004). Perceptual and Acoustic Evidence for Species-Level Differences in Meow Vocalizations by Domestic Cats (Felis catus} and African Wild Cats (Felis silvestris lybica). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 118(3).

Nicastro, N., & Owren, M. J. (2003). Classification of domestic cat (Felis catus) vocalizations by naive and experienced human listeners. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 117(1)

Yeon, S. C., Kim, Y. K., Park, S. J., Lee, S. S., Lee, S. Y., Suh, E. H., … Lee, H. J. (2011). Differences between vocalization evoked by social stimuli in feral cats and house cats. Behavioural Processes, 87(2)

(via dreamychocolateprincess-moving)