The Cat Vet

Cat Vocalizations
Caring for your cat with a Flowchart so it gets the attention it needs and you care for it without feeling over-worked.
Okay, Cats have 7 -- yes, count them, seven -- primary vocalizations. First, there exists what I refer to as the 2 "okay" vocalizations -- purring and happy meowing, 1 sign of interest, the most bizarre chattering, chirruping sound, and then 4 vocalizations of necessity -- meowing or screeching in distress, protest, frustration, and for attention. You can really clump the cat's vocalizations into two groups of 2 and 5 different effects, too. The purring and chirruping and then the five types of "meows" -- four of which imply necessity, 1 implies happiness and agreeability. Purring sounds like the most jaded two-sided vocalization because purring typically means great satisfaction (like when being petted or eating) or in the midst of great pain (like with an injury).

So the best way to auditorially "decipher" your cat you should just set up a nested if-else statement as follows:


if (cat meows)
{
if (rises and falls)
The cat feels Happy;
Good job. Don't worry about the cat.
else-if (aversion meows)
{
do
Identify the aversion meow as frustration, protest, or distress.
{
if (sigh or snort)
With sound occurs with motions of necessity (beckoning to be let out, lurking around bowl)
The cat feels Frustration;
Help the cat achieve the goal such as overcoming loneliness, hunger, or boredom or distract the cat from that goal;
else-if (whine or hiss)
The cat Protests something;
Look at the water-bowel, over-petting, some other obstacle or action that could irritate the cat;
else-if (high-pitched shrieking loud and frantic)
The cat feels Distress;
Extricate the cat from the distressing situation;
var loopcount=-1
loopcount++
if (loop count >2) break;
}
while (cat emits aversion sounds)
else-if(short)
With intrusive behavior (jumping around you)
The cat seeks Attention and/or Greets you;
Pet, welcome, and play with the cat;
else-if (cat purrs)
while (!(cat purrs && doesn't gravitate to you))
{
if (cat shows disfigurement and/or signs of suffering)
The cat feels pain;
Help heal the cat;
else
The cat welcomes and greets you;
Pet and "say hello" to the cat;
var loopcount=-1
loopcount++
if (loop count >2) break;
}
The cat feels content || you have checked it 3 times and given it adequate time;
else-if (cat chirrups or chatters)
The cat holds interest in something.
Investigate in what the cat finds interesting to learn about your cat's fascinations.
}



With that flow diagram, you can quickly decipher exactly what you cat "feels" from what she vocalizes to you and respond accordingly.

Examples: If you identify the cat as feeling distressed, look at the environment. Is she snagged on something? Is she locked in a room? Or if you identify the cat seeks attention, pet it, play with it, etc. If the cat gives vocalizations of frustration, you could help it reach the toy that it keeps chasing after or if it

Purring has the most diverse meaning because it can signify pain, pleasure, or greeting. Generally, the purr indicates a positive feeling in the cat.

In reference to the pain purring, I had a very strange thing occur one time with a kitten. The kitten had a collar on and when I checked in on it, it had removed the collar some how. I could only assume that it had jammed on something and come undone. Apparently in that process it sounded like it damaged its vocal chords and excessively “purred” (likely the painful kind) after the incident. ). If a cat gets an internal injury that results in a constant purr-pain state, you should just return it or vet it.

The protest (whine), frustration (snort or sigh), and distress (ear-piercingly shrill meow) are in the same group, but the distress meow, usually is the only thing you can directly do something about. If the cat gets immersed in water or touches a hot stove or catches its paw in something, expect the distress meow. Distress meows can usually, fortunately, be resolved most quickly. Many times, you'll have to ignore the frustration or protest meow because identifying its cause may be too vague. For example, the cat could see some other cat walk outside and whine-meow in protest of not being able to chase after it and then snort in frustration and you may not have even seen the other cat, so determining the source of its protest may be impossible in such a situation. Generally, a protest is a lighter form of a distress, and a frustration is a lighter form of a protest.

So you could plug in a separate do-while loop check to see if it vocalizes aversion sounds like this

do
Identify the aversion meow as frustration, protest, or distress.
{
if (sigh or snort)
With sound occurs with motions of necessity (beckoning to be let out, lurking around bowl)
The cat feels Frustration;
Help the cat achieve the goal such as overcoming loneliness, hunger, or boredom or distract the cat from that goal;
else-if (whine or hiss)
The cat Protests something;
Look at the water-bowel, over-petting, some other obstacle or action that could irritate the cat;
else-if (high-pitched shrieking loud and frantic)
The cat feels Distress;
Extricate the cat from the distressing situation;
var loopcount=-1
loopcount++
if (loop count >2) break;
}
while (cat emits aversion sounds)

The above loop ensures that you will try to help the cat if it displays frustration, protest, or distress, but you won't spend your entire life helping the cat because the loop breaks after three loops, ensuring that you will have given the cat MORE than adequate amount of attention, affection, and your efforts to heal and/or help it. This may seem like overly-simplified labeling but it's either that or becoming confused and then frustrated yourself. Two animals frustrated is worse of than one; so label, label, label away and run the do-while loop!

Then you're only left with the attention (short) and happy (rise and fall) meows, which are easy to identify.

The purring has this while loop.

else-if (cat purrs)
while (!(cat purrs && doesn't gravitate to you))
{
if (cat shows disfigurement and/or signs of suffering)
The cat feels pain;
Help heal the cat;
else
The cat welcomes and greets you;
Pet and "say hello" to the cat;
var loopcount=-1
loopcount++
if (loop count >2) break;
}
The cat feels content you have checked it 3 times and given it adequate time;

This loop will first check to see if the cat purrs with the presence of visible signs of pain or excessive gravitation to you. In short, this checks to see if the cat is in pain or seeks attention and greeting first, if those are not met, the loop breaks we know the cat feels content. Otherwise, we enter the loop and check to see if it shows signs of suffering, and to remedy that, if not, we can assume that it just is greeting you and seeks attention with its purring. Like the other loop, this loop breaks after three counts to ensure you don't spend your entire time being controlled by your cat's purring, but gives the cat adequate caring.

So to be organized with this. The cat has three aversion meows

Frustration
Protest
Distress

If you don't hear those, you're generally safe to assume that the cat feels "okay" about things. Otherwise any other meows are attention-seeking, greeting, or happiness meows and we'll assume that. So if the cat meows and it isn't an aversion meow, you can assume it's either seeking attention, happy, or greeting you. If it purrs, it could feel pain, pleasure, or greet you; respond accordingly.

The greeting vocalization is the only emotion that has a purr and the attention-seeking-greeting meow.

Conclusively, the entire loop has a three step initial if-statement. You just check to see if the cat meows, purrs, or chatters, and then follow into the nested statements with whichever of those conditions occurs. Within the meowing if-statement, you have to there exists three main conditions, too, the happy meow, aversion meows (which, in turn, have three sub-categories based on the do-while check), and the attention-seeking-greeting meow.

If the vocalization branches into the purring, purrs only have three meanings: pleasure, pain, or the seeking-greeting meow behavior.

Finally, if the cat chatters, this means one thing: she has an interest in something! This generally mimics the cat death-bite used to kill small prey like birds, rodents, or chipmunks in the wild. If the cat sees one of those animals (like out the window), it may simply get excited and use the chattering sound!

Claws
The best way to deal with cat claws is to cap them or clip them yourself.

Kneading
Kneading feels very pleasurable for cats. This sounds strange to use because usually the animal being kneaded (massaged) gets the pleasure, but kneading brings back memories of the cat’s early kitten days when it kneaded its mother’s nipples for milk. This sounds very strange, but sometimes, kneading produces an orgasmic like effect for the cat! In short, kneading pleases cats greatly.

Playing
I want to play with my cats -- big time. It should feel like a fun experience to have them solve problems. Many times cats will dive bomb your feet as you walk by, too. This again, simply indicates that the cat wants to play and may feel bored. With adequate cat furniture, toys, or other cats for stimulation, the cat may not dive-bomb your legs anymore. Another maneuver, typically indicative of a bored cat who wants to play, in addition to the ankle dive-bomb is the ambush, where the cat will pounce on your as you enter its “domain” area. This simply shows boredom and eagerness to play and does not indicate a lack of trust of you in its lair or anything else.

Food
I definitely don’t’ want a Garfield fat cat (although I wouldn’t mind a cat with Garfield’s cool, witty personality), but a skeleton cat doesn’t sound healthy either. A skinny, agile cat makes the best companion

Marking
Okay, there exist two kinds of marking territory – the good kind and the bad kind. The bad kind is spraying, urinating on areas. This generally represents a problem with the cat. The cat may feel intimidated by something – like another cat it sees – or just may feel uncomfortable with a certain environmental variable. The spraying marking is a protest and indication of frustration with the cat. You should treat the second kind of marking as a compliment! Cats have special facial glands under their chin and on their face that release hormones when rubbed. If you cat rubs its face on your feet or some similar gesture, this means it’s “marking you” with those facial pheromones, claiming you as his – a great compliment, indeed!

Water
If you want to go extra fancy, running the cat’s water through a filter to purify it might make it healthier; plus cats don’t drink tons of water anyways. This sounds surprising considering that they are obligate carnivores, meaning they eat meat and only meat. Meat generally tastes salty, so the fact that they don’t drink a ton of water may come as a shock, but it’s still good to know that purification could make a good alternative to just general tap water.

Play Behavior
Animals are all about love (licking, petting, purring!). While this may get annoying after awhile, I think humans -- cnn, etc. -- have lost that tendency for love because they don't galvanize their compassionate reservoir.

Discipline
Disciplining and training the cat can be a complicated, complex, demanding task, at times . For example, if your cat pees on the carpet and you say “No” loudly and throw it in the litter box, it may then “learn” through operant conditioning not to not pee on the carpet, but that the litter box means pain and is “wrong”! So if you cat bites you, try to just blow in its face and maybe reinforce this by saying “no”, but always substitute the biting with a straw or some other “teething-approved” item. The key with training the cat revolves around knowing that you can’t change the cat’ behavior, generally. Substituting the maladaptive behavior with approved behavior is the best thing to do. For example, if the cat constantly tackles you, let it keep tackling, but get it to tackle with a toy or another cat. Bottom-line: you cannot discipline a cat like you discipline a dog or any other animal. Cats exist in their own world. They don’t see a swat on the nose as “disciplining”; they may see it as an instigation to play and become more aggressive, or consider to as play, or they will “stop doing” a different thing. The best way to discipline your cat is through substituting the “disruptive habits” with good toys or play zones.

Here's another great link on vocalizations.

Fun cat factoids:

• A cat can recognize its owner's footsteps from hundreds of feet away.
• A cat's meal is the equivalent of 5 mice.
• A cat can jump up to 7 times its height (tigers can jump as high as 16 feet or as far as 33 feet).
• Cats can recognize their owner's footsteps up to 100 feet away.
• Compared to the dog's 10 vocalizations, cats have access to about 90 different types of vocalizations.
• Some mythology believes cats are exalted, all-knowing souls but are left "mute" and thus can't influence human decisions.
• Body temperature of cats is about 4 degrees hotter (102) and their heart beats about 100 times faster (around 160 bpm)
• Cats and dogs are digitigrades; they walk directly on their toes.
• Cats directly register when walking, meaning their hind legs step in the footprints of the forelegs, minimizing noise and tracks.