Body language, behavior, and vocalizations are keys to understanding the feline mind.
You and your cat might speak different languages, but you can still communicate with each other.
Indicators such as the look in your cat's eyes, the tone of her voice, the position of her ears, and the motion of her tail can provide important clues that reveal her feelings and intentions. You can learn to "read" these signals so you’ll get a good idea of what's on your cat's mind.
You'll learn a lot from your cat's wide vocabulary of chirps and meows. You'll know when it's time to get up (at least in your cat's opinion), when your cat's feeling affectionate, or when your cat's feeling threatened or is in pain.
Meow is an all-purpose word. This can be a greeting ("Hey, how ya doin'?), a command ("I want up, I want down, More food now"), an objection ("Touch me at your own risk"), an announcement ("Here's your mouse"). Some cats even walk around the house meowing to themselves.
Chirps and trills are how a mother cat tells her kittens to follow her. Kitty wants you to follow him, usually to his food bowl. If you have more than one cat, they will often converse with each other this way.
The purr is a sign of contentment. Cats purr whenever they're happy, even while they’re eating. Sometimes, however, a cat may purr when he's anxious or sick, using the purr as a way to comfort himself, like a child sucking his thumb.
Growling, hissing, and spitting indicates a cat who is annoyed, frightened, angry or aggressive. Leave this cat alone.
The yowl or howl is a loud, drawn-out meow. Your cat is in some kind of distress—stuck in a closet, looking for you, in pain. In unneutered and unspayed cats, it's part of the mating behavior (and very annoying). Elderly cats sometimes suffer from cognitive disorder (dementia) and may howl because they're disoriented. Screaming means your cat is in terrible pain.
Chattering, chittering, twittering is the strange noise your cat makes when he's sitting in the window watching birds or squirrels. Some experts think that this is an exaggeration of the "killing bite," when a cat grabs his prey by the neck and works his teeth through the bones to snap them.
Ears
- Forward: alert, interested, happy
- Backward, sideways, flat ("airplane ears"): irritable, angry, frightened
- Swiveling: attentive, listening to every little sound
Eyes
- Pupils constricted: offensively aggressive; content
- Pupils dilated: nervous, submissive (somewhat dilated); defensively aggressive (fully dilated); playful
Tail
- Erect, fur flat: alert, inquisitive, happy
- Fur standing on end: angry, frightened
- Held very low or tucked between legs: insecure, anxious
- Thrashing back and forth: agitated. The faster the tail, the madder the cat
- Straight up, quivering: excited, really happy. If your cat is not neutered, he or she could be getting ready to spray something!
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