Cat Talk – The Meaning of Mew, Meow and Yeow

This is for all you cat owners out there! As cat owners, we all know that cats have a vocabulary all their own and they are good at getting their points across. How many of us have given in to the pleas of a hungry cat demanding to be fed? Or how many of us are greeted with a meow from our kitty pal when we get home? Have you noticed how different those calls are?

I have two cats of my own and they certainly do make sure that they get what they want. I have noticed that they use different calls for different reasons.

The Soft Little Mew

This is my favorite sound. It is just so cute! One of my cats uses this sound to ask a question very nicely. He will bring a toy over to me and set it down right next to me and sit and just give a little ‘mew’. It is the cutest thing! Who could resist such a nice and polite request? So I end up tossing the toy a few times.

The Loud MEOW

The loud MEOW when accompanied with a direct stare is a demand. Usually it is around mealtime when they are hungry and they want to be fed NOW!

The Meow-Purr

This sound is characteristic of Maine Coons and is a sound they make when they are feeling good. They are essentially saying, ‘Hey, I like you too.” It is a meow followed by a purr. It sounds like meowprr. One of my cats is a Maine Coon mix and when I first heard him, I thought something was wrong with his voice and then I thought he just has a raspy voice. But then I did some research and found that the sound is made by all Maine Coons.

The Yeow

Yeow means ‘Get off my property!’ Or if it is a shrieked Yeow it mean ‘OUCH!’ In both instances, the cat is under stress.

Cats have a vast vocabulary that extends far beyond these sounds. Once we understand what each sound means, we are in a better position to understand our cats and also to communicate back to them.

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Essential Cat Care and Training Tips

Many new cat owners really struggle with their cat house training. If they don’t go about it in the right way from the beginning, this can be very frustrating. And this frustration can lead to them striking or shaking the offending cat.

You cannot beat a cat or kitten into obedience, so that they become the perfect home cat – you will only provoke hatred and fear, which will further reduce the chances of training her properly. A very effective alternative to physical punishment is to keep a spray bottle of water handy – if she misbehaves, a little spray will let her know you are not pleased.

The surest key to success with your cat house training is to try to understand how your cat thinks, why she does the things she does, what motivates her. If you expect her to do something that goes against her nature, then you better be prepared to make it worth her while. If you want to make the most rapid progress, a modest investment in a decent cat manual or guide will be richly rewarded, and you will at a stroke begin to understand “cat think” and cat care in general, and also avoid the most common mistakes.

You will find that the most rewarding approach is to encourage good behavior, either by kind words combined with gentle stroking, or some food treat. She will quickly learn to associate particular actions with positive responses, and, conversely, if these rewards are withheld, she will know that she has transgressed in some way.

Cats are known for their short attention span, so your training sessions should be fairly brief, ideally around 10 minutes. And because their attention does tend to wander, make sure your sessions are held somewhere where there are as few distractions as possible. The perfect location is a small indoors room, with no view outside, and no disturbances.

The essential training exercises that concern most new cat owners are to do with urination, scratching, jumping and biting.

Most cat owners face problems with their cat not using the litter box – obviously, a new kitten has to be taught toilet training cat style, but even mature well-behaved cats can suddenly “forget” to use the litter box, and, when this occurs, the wise owner will know to look for some change in the cat’s environment that will have triggered this behavior.

The second biggest concern is with cat scratching, a behavior that is an essential part of the animal’s nature. The provision of good scratching posts in strategic places will alleviate the problem, and spare your furniture and curtains. The surgical removal of the cat’s claws was until recently seen as an easy and permanent solution to the problem, but in a more humane age this is seen as quite a barbaric act to perform on a Cat, and one that upsets the whole balance mechanism of the cat, and is really traumatic.

A cat will not expend unnecessary energy, so if she jumps there is a reason for it. Most often, she will jump onto the window sill to view the outside world – if you want her not to jump on a particular sill, block off the view for the first 15 inches, perhaps with a piece of fabric. If there is no view, she will soon go elsewhere. Jumping onto counters or worktops or tables in the kitchen should be completely discouraged from the beginning – it might simply signal that she wants feeding.

Biting is unfortunately often encouraged in a kitchen – children in particular enjoy being bitten by young kitten teeth, and will often playfully provoke it until it bites. Cats have pretty sharp teeth, so you have to let your cat know that biting will not be tolerated. If the behavior persists, you might discourage it with a spray from your water bottle.

Cat Care Tips – Cat Socialization

Adding a new cat as a member of your family is often more exciting than tending to the cat you already have. Most cats will accept new additions as they are basically solitary by instinct. You should exercise special care when introducing a new cat to your home as cats tend to be territorial. Ten to fifteen days is the normal time required for a successful introduction of your new cat.

This time may vary due to the cats individual personality and temperament. Be sure that you give you present cat plenty of love and affection during this introduction process. This will allow your present cat to feel that happy, secure, and that he is not in competition with your new cat for your affections.

It is advised that you keep you new cat in a separate space until the introduction process has been fully completed. Recommended locations for new cats could be areas such as a bathroom, a spare room or any small space away from where your current cat sleeps.

Be sure to leave toys, food and water dishes and a litter box in the room for your new cat. Your current cat may howl and hiss at the new cat. This behavior is natural as your current cat is trying to send the new cat a message that he doesn’t belong. If you find this situation happening, simply ignore it. If you punish your cat for this type of behavior, it will most certainly lead to more serious problems later on.

At the start, your current cat and your new cat should eat from separate dishes in separate areas. In time, you can begin the socializing process by allowing them to eat from the same dish but at different times. This will allow the scent of each cat to be present at the food dish.

In time, each cat will get used to the different scents on the food dish. You can begin to bring their feeding times closer and closer together until eventually you can feed them together at the same time from the same dish. In time, and with much patience, they will soon adjust and enjoy their meals without hissing or growling at each other. Once this step has been achieved, you can begin introducing the new cat to the areas of the house where your present cat is accustomed to.

Allow your cats to smell and greet each other in their own way. There may be occasional growling or hissing. When this occurs, simply break them up and re introduce them to each other at a later time.

Killers and Company

There is a fascinating creature living amongst us; a violent vicious hunter which kills with impunity. There are millions living in and around the world’s cities and their numbers are growing at an exponential rate. Pound for pound they are one of the most efficient predators on the planet, and even now they are prowling the streets of your neighbourhood searching out prey to add to their long list of victims.

They are cats, the closest most people will ever come to living with a real wild animal. But how well do we actually know our feline friends?

Only by studying their design and observing their habits and mannerisms can we get some inkling into their often secret lives.

The first tamed cats were used for pest control in Egypt around 3000 BC and were a species known as the North African Wildcat-a hardy member of the cat family, which later became loved as a household companion and worshipped as a god. Domesticated cats later spread to Italy and then to the rest of Europe where they became highly prized possessions.

The cat’s fortunes changed, however, during the Middle Ages as the Christian church, aware of the animal’s connection with paganism and witchcraft, often killed cats by burning them alive. The myth that the black cat solely was considered the witches familiar is wrong, and cats of all colours were killed.

The cat became popular again only when its usefulness for reducing vermin populations became recognised; a popularity and respect which has remained to the present day.

The domestic feline is a physiological marvel of nature, a creature known to be endowed with lightning speed and reflexes. As a hunter the parts of the cat’s brain associated with movement and the senses are very well developed. The spine is extremely flexible also, allowing it to squeeze through the tiniest of gaps and for the same reason it lacks a collarbone which would broaden the chest. As runners they are short distance specialists; when a cat runs, all its legs are in the air for a time allowing it to accelerate up to 30mph for short bursts. The strong hind quarters and back provide amazing jumping capabilities – 6 feet of fence or tree proves little problem and the human equivalent would be a person capable of jumping onto the roof of a house.

They have a better sense of balance than humans, mainly because they have a tail which they use in the same way that a tightrope walker uses a pole. Contrary to many people’s belief, cats cannot see in the dark any better than we can, but their eyes are more specialised and are useful for gathering every scrap of light. Their vision works best at dawn and dusk, perhaps because this is the time when their prey are either waking up or retiring and so are not at their most alert. In addition cats have a wider field of vision than man and so are able to see more movement on their periphery.

Hearing, too, is an advanced design of the cat allowing it to hear sounds up to two octaves higher than the highest note we can hear and surprisingly it hears higher notes than its arch enemy, the dog.

So with these features in their arsenal domestic cats are built as natural hunters but unlike their wild “cousins” like tigers and cheetahs they don’t often hunt to satisfy hunger, although they do occasionally eat their catch. Basically they are in it for the sport, perhaps instinctively seeing it as entertainment or a form of exercise. The way a cat toys with its prey may seem quit cruel to us, as the victim is rarely killed immediately. this is simply another way for a cat to polish its hunting skills. If it can bounce a sparrow into the air and catch it in its claws it has a better chance of success when it must pluck one of the air to satisfy hunger. Similarly, kittens usually start with household spiders and flies, honing their own skills before progressing to feather and fur.