It was quite a struggle to teach The Carers cat person language. These Humans are quite arrogant in their dismissal of the intelligence of non-Humans. Sometimes I like to act dumb just to lull them into their complacency, and then spring some marvellous philosophical concept \u2013 for which, of course, they take all the credit. Anyway, language is a case in point, as their communication skills with us are quite pathetic. I fully understand when they say \u2018breakfast\u2019, \u2018biscuits\u2019, \u2018dinner\u2019, \u2018out\u2019, \u2018no\u2019, or variations on \u2018Tuti\u2019 to coerce me back indoors, which I usually pretend not to hear. But I had to invent a whole range of vocalisations in order to make myself understood. I devised a \u2018mew-squeak\u2019 when one of The Carers comes into the room as a matter of feline politeness; a stronger \u2018mew\u2019 in response to a question; a loud \u2018mi-ouw\u2019 (repeated) when I needed to catch their attention, as, for instance, when it is time to fill the bowl with biscuits (kibble!), or I want to go outside, or show something to a Carer; a forceful \u2018mi-ouw\u2019, more like a growl, to indicate I had had enough of that game; and a long drawn out yowly-yowly-yowly voice accompanied by a little dance for greeting the return of a Carer after several days\u2019 absence. Of course I purr when I am satisfied with the way things are going \u2013 or, rather, when I think that\u2019s what The Carers want to hear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was quite a struggle to teach The Carers cat person language. These Humans are quite arrogant in their dismissal of the intelligence of non-Humans. Sometimes I like to act dumb just to lull them into their complacency, and then spring some marvellous philosophical concept \u2013 for which, of course, they take all the credit. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":895,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeanfisher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeanfisher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeanfisher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeanfisher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeanfisher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeanfisher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeanfisher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jeanfisher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeanfisher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeanfisher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jeanfisher.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}