My experiences on cats and warning sounds (when jumping, running, turning corners)

When I was growing up I had 4 indoor/outdoor cats. They were all great hunters, and they all spent a good 8-12 hours inside each day. None of these cats made noises when jumping or running. They were all very stealthy.

With the next generation, I had purely indoor cats. The first one I got made no sounds save for meowing at her people to get what she wanted. A few years late, I got a second cat, already an adult when I took her off the streets. After about 6 months, she began making sounds when turning blind corners or jumping up onto chairs, tables, beds: a mostly closed mouth purr-meow sound (technically a chirrup, I think?). Soon after, the older cat began doing the same.

Skip forward several years: I trapped a couple feral kittens and took them in. Initially, they made no warning sounds. After several months, they began making sounds when jumping, turning corners and running just like the other cats.

I find this really impressive adaptive behavior. Cats of mine who spent half their time outdoors never adopted warning sounds because of the enormous tactical disadvantage it would have presented when hunting. It would be difficult for a human to make a habit of only doing this indoors and never outdoors, so it's understandable why the indoor/outdoor cats never made warning sounds inside.

Beyond mating, cats' main aim in their relations with other cats is to avoid conflict. Outside, it isn't hard to give one another a wide berth. Inside, they're forced to adapt to a more social setting where it's easily possible to accidentally run into or land on another cat. The warning sound, like a semi-truck going in reverse, is an effective way to never surprise another cat. I've seen it avert a thousand battles.

You've had a cat behavior lab going on in your own home!     Those are some very interesting observations about your indoor-outdoor cats being less vocal than your inside only cats. They bring to mind observations that feral cats rarely, if ever, meow or communicate vocally.  These sounds are an adaptation cats have developed to communicate with humans.   You seem to be finding that indoor cats become more vocal in order to communicate with other cats as well.

I would love to see some scientific studies on this!    There are studies about the different sounds cats make to communicate with their humans but I couldn't find any on indoor cats adopting "speech" to communicate with fellow cats.

ralphonzo said:

...

Beyond mating, cats' main aim in their relations with other cats is to avoid conflict. Outside, it isn't hard to give one another a wide berth. Inside, they're forced to adapt to a more social setting where it's easily possible to accidentally run into or land on another cat. The warning sound, like a semi-truck going in reverse, is an effective way to never surprise another cat. I've seen it avert a thousand battles.

Click to expand...

Heehee, I bet the kitties when indoors are just chirping the warning sound: "The human is listening & watching, don't fight right now! Chirrup, chirrup, avert the immediate battle! Orange alert! Meet me outside at the third fence post from the end of the street at 11 pm and I'll show you who is boss! Meowrr"



I agree with Margd. This is interesting, as there are several posters here and on the web who believe that adult cats don't communicate with each other using their voices (meows, chirrups, etc.). They believe that adult cats only meow/chirp/talk as learned behavior in order to communicate with humans.

So, you could do a study with your own cats, maybe using cameras and filming them when you are not in the area, to see if they still chirrup and "talk" and avert battles when there are no humans around.

Margd said:

 
You've had a cat behavior lab going on in your own home! 

   Those are some very interesting observations about your indoor-outdoor cats being less vocal than your inside only cats. They bring to mind observations that feral cats rarely, if ever, meow or communicate vocally.  These sounds are an adaptation cats have developed to communicate with humans.   You seem to be finding that indoor cats become more vocal in order to communicate with other cats as well.

I would love to see some scientific studies on this!    There are studies about the different sounds cats make to communicate with their humans but I couldn't find any on indoor cats adopting "speech" to communicate with fellow cats.

Click to expand...

Yep, it's a cat house all right (err no, officer, not that kind of 'cat house')... I imagine the hunting disadvantage disincentive of meowing/chirruping is so strongly ingrained

in adult ferals that many of them never develop warning noises, but fortunately for me (and my carpet), my ferals were caught around 3 months old. One was essentially carte blanche and the other was tame within two weeks, so they are basically totally normal 10-month-olds at this point.

This site makes a brief mention of the chirrup "eliciting the approach of other cats." But yes, I'd love to read some studies on this.

PushPurrCatPaws said:

Heehee, I bet the kitties when indoors are just chirping the warning sound: "The human is listening & watching, don't fight right now! Chirrup, chirrup, avert the immediate battle! Orange alert! Meet me outside at the third fence post from the end of the street at 11 pm and I'll show you who is boss! Meowrr"

I agree with Margd. This is interesting, as there are several posters here and on the web who believe that adult cats don't communicate with each other using their voices (meows, chirrups, etc.). They believe that adult cats only meow/chirp/talk as learned behavior in order to communicate with humans.

So, you could do a study with your own cats, maybe using cameras and filming them when you are not in the area, to see if they still chirrup and "talk" and avert battles when there are no humans around.

Click to expand...

Haha, I'm actually quite certain they'd do it even if I wasn't home. I can hear them play in the living room when I'm in my bedroom, and when they're flying around corners and jumping on couches they make their usual warning sounds. I have little doubt that when I'm out of the bedroom on the opposite side of the house and one of my cats decides to jump on the bed, they will make their usual "here I come" jump sound--regardless of if another cat is on the bed and needs that warning to lessen the chance of a freakout.

One could say that these warnings aren't directed at a specific cat, and they would be right--they occur regardless of another cat's presence. However, the depot announces the train will depart shortly if any potential passengers are still waiting outside or not--it's still an attempt to communicate with other people. These warning sounds aren't an attempt to communicate with a specific cat, but are attempts to communicate with cats. There's also zero expectation of reciprocation (the person announcing the train's departure isn't anticipating a conversation to come of that either). Those are important distinctions I think and could satisfy some skeptics. In fact, you could say my cats are communicating "to" one another, as opposed to "with". When they meow at me to negotiate an upgrade from my homemade chicken and turkey catfood to chunk tuna, we have something more akin to transactional communication.

I do agree that adult cats certainly don't meow at one another. There have probably been exceptions throughout the history of domestication, but it must be very uncommon. One popular theory of the classic meow which the above link repeats is that it's a kitten's mew adapted to get what they want from their humans just as they did their mothers. That rings true to me. One of my kittens still has a special call he uses specifically to rally his sister (when he wants to play, and sometimes seemingly just because he wants her familiar presence around) which is a sort of mournful wail which resembles several sad meows strung together, but again, it's not verbally transactional in that the only expected reply is his sister showing up, and it's different enough not to be considered the classic meow which cats use to control us humans. This is also something I expect he may outgrow when he's a full-fledged adult at around 18 months (he's lagging behind his sister a little emotionally ). It'll be interesting to see...

We put cats in such unnatural contexts--four cats living in close proximity, two litter mates among them whose constant contact will minimize the natural drift litter mates experience in the wild--but that's the nature of domestication (paradox intended). It's interesting to think that we've possibly made cats, across countless generation, into more social creatures than their ancestors had ever been. You fear packs of hungry lost dogs in rural areas? Beware, humans of the future, prides of feral cats!

(Side note: I find myself writing mostly about kittens, but just want to reiterate there are two other cats who warn the others all the same--one is 8 and one is 9).

There are also indoor cats who almost never make a sound, to their human or to their fellow felines.  I have a brother and sister who meow so rarely as to be essentially mute.  They were born outside as strays but were rescued and brought inside while still young kittens.  The quiet was actually a bit unnerving to me at first because my previous cats were all so much more vocal.  I miss all the yakking, though I wouldn't trade these two sweethearts for the world.  At any rate, I wish I could test your observations on my own two.

Thanks for posting the link to that article.  It was very a very interesting analysis of the different sounds cats make and what they are trying to communicate.