Cats are smarter than people, YES, indeed except that they don’t talk, they meow and I would like to understand what they want when they insist in meowing. It is very frustrating not being able to communicate.

The cat I got when I was 8 is still alive (fourteen, outlived her son). My poor mom is taking care of it because I can’t have pets. It keeps pooping in her shoes. It is named after the cat in homeward bound. It is the worst cat ever. It scratches at the door and then won’t go out. Her claws don’t retract so she gets stuck to the carpet.

One thing I’ve found useful is to try following the cat when s/he is meowing. One of my cats (Shadow) has a habit of sitting/standing there yelling at me until I get up, at which point he will trot off in some direction, and by following him I can find out what he wants. Sometimes it’s food but other times it’s random stuff like “don’t sit at your desk, come sit on the kitchen floor and pet me and oh hey look out the window! Birds!”

Well in the wild (including in feral colonies) you don’t usually get adult cats outside the fighting or mating contexts meowing at each other. But cats raised in human homes to be tame will often meow at each other well into adulthood, especially if they’re littermates. Part of that whole “retained juvenile behavior” thing…they grow up less inhibited when they’re not constantly having to be on guard for their survival, I guess. My 3 ex-feral sibling kitties are just over a year old now, so technically adults, and they still “call” each other to play, etc.

CPP: re. “Useful to who”….hmm, perhaps I used the wrong word. “Effective” would have been a better choice, as in, “this method may be effective if your goal is to figure out what a cat is trying to communicate with his/her meowing”. Apologies for the incoherence.