I hear about animal communicators, people who claim they can translate between pets and humans, and I’m not convinced.  Not that I wouldn’t want a gift like that; it’d be nice, for example, if Nicky and Caitie-Belle could tell us, “We’re just playing.  We’re not really trying to maul each other.”

   Most of the time, though, such a gift isn’t necessary to understand our cats' feelings.  Through experience or context, we can usually figure out what they’re saying:  “I’m happy.”;  “Let’s play!”;  “I want to sleep in your lap.”;  “I want to go outside.”  And when we don’t get it right the first time, our Good Cats repeat it until we do.

   One day, Pat was sitting at the kitchen table when Nicky walked in and sat down at her feet, then looked up at her and said loudly, “Maaaaah!”  Given the timing of the request, the tone of voice and its urgency, Pat guessed that our Gatito Perfecto wanted to get in her lap.  She turned to face him and he did leap into her lap, but he didn’t lie down or get comfortable.  Just as quickly, he jumped back down to the floor and meowed again.

   In these situations, I’d be tempted to meow right back at him, but Pat knows better than to try to reply in kind.  When humans try to speak cat language, they risk embarrassing themselves and their cats.  That language barrier is summed up in the following passage from Susan Fromberg Schaeffer's book "The Autobiography of Foudini M. Cat.”  The title character has a human he has affectionately nicknamed “Warm,” and while he cares about her, he also despairs at her misguided attempts to speak the Cattish language.

”Warm will never learn to speak it. You would think this would be clear to her, but it isn’t, because whenever she mews at a cat she sees on the street, the startled animal always stops and looks about for another cat, and so Warm believes cats can understand her. She has no idea the cat on the street has just heard someone say, ‘Goldfish! In the trees! Squirrel milk! The egg is coming! Ear thorns! Collar food!’

When she takes me to the doctor’s office, I apologize profusely to the other cats in the room, saying, ‘She doesn’t mean it. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.’

’Dog’s breath!’ says Warm.

And the other cats regard me with pity, asking themselves why I am so unfortunate as to be assigned to a human being who is a complete lunatic.”

   While Pat knew only that Nicky wasn’t looking for a lap to lie down in, she wasn’t left in the dark for long.  The little black cat didn’t have to meow another word to get his message across, either.  He sat down facing his empty food dish and stared up at the cabinet where we keep their canned food.  As hints go, that was right up there with two or three neon signs flashing "Now do you get it??"

   So our advice is, if you don't understand at first, be patient and wait for the cat to clarify its wishes.  As for animal communicators, well, interpreting the language is one thing, but teaching us how to interpret would be even better.  Ideally, though, I'd prefer to learn from a native speaker of the language.  All we need is for one of our Good Cats to volunteer to teach us a quick course in Conversational Cattish.

In fact, someone has gone to the effort of putting together a Cat Translation Dictionary, enlightening us with a book of useful phrases to know when dealing with cats.

Olivia the Cat's Weblog is a good example of why we need a comprehensive and unabridged dictionary of the Cattish tongue.

In the short story Tobermory, a human teaches a cat to speak English.  This does not earn either of them the accolades you might expect.

James Randi does an amazing job of exploring and explaining supernatural claims with a skeptic's eye.