Cat parents? We hoomans are just mere caretakers. Butlers. Slaves.

My cat was born from a stray, and I took it upon myself to raise her. She acts like she doesn't remember what it was like to be outside for two years of her life, as she has completely adapted to her regal lifestyle with no interest in going back outside ever. She is convinced that water straight from the tap is better than water straight from the tap into her bowl. She also will drink from the puddles on the floor after a shower, because that is somehow also better than water in her bowl. She also scratches at doors she wants open. She also was mad at me for an entire day for the two or three drops of flea medication.

Oh, sure. Cats, and dogs, too, can learn how to speak in their own sort of language like that. It’s simple, but effective sometimes.

For my cat, it’s mostly limited to:

• hello
• hey (to get my attention)
• I want something
• expressing happiness
• expressing unhappiness
• I am angry
• I am scared

Before we got our kitten (2 years old) our older cat (8 years old) only had a handful of very similar meows. Sure, there would be tone so you could kinda guess what he wanted, but they were all variations of the same. The new kitten comes in, and she's a chatter box. She makes so many different sounds, you can always tell what mood she's in, what she's doing, and what she wants. It's lovely.

The problem with this is that she's started teaching the older cat new sounds, so on top of his normal sounds he'll occasionally make one that I've never heard him make before. And it's absolutely disorienting. He'll make a noise and look at me expectantly, and I will have absolutely no idea what he wants. He's always good to show me what he wants, but man must he think I'm an idiot now.

Cats and dogs. All my pets over the years, I could decipher different wants and needs from sound or body language. They train us just as much as we train them.

Truth.