Talk to me….

Anyone who’s shared their home with feline family members and paid attention to their vocalisations will have recognised cats have quite an extensive vocal range and their own language. Not only do they use noise, they also clearly exhibit expressive body language to communicate. But there can still be miscommunication between them and their human family members. At the start of the pandemic, a lady in Florida who had learned about an interesting experiment by a speech language therapist using an AAC device to research how well her and her dog could interact if the technology was featured in their communications decided she also wanted to try this process, with her cat.

The cat in question, Billi, appears to have mastered the AAC device to some degree. You can make your own judgments on how well by following the link to read an article on her and her human, Kendra.

https://salon.com/2021/12/12/a-talking-cat-is-giving-scientists-insight-into-how-felines-think/

Kendra isn’t the first person to try and assist communication between feline and human family members. In 2020, a former Amazon engineer by the name of Javier Sanchez was project manager for developing an app called MeowTalk, which “promised to translate your cats vocalisations into something humans can understand.” The app is apparently already available for people to download. You can learn more about it here:

https://people.com/pets/meowtalk-app-translate-cat-meows/