DISQUS

Siobhan · 5 months ago

Awesome. I knew my cats had me well trained.

Chrysalis15 · 5 months ago

Ha! My kitty doesn't purr to wake me up & feed him.. he pokes at me under the blankets and then meows quite loudly at me. I find it rather demanding.

grrrrzilla · 5 months ago

I so want to be a child in the Petulant family! Sequin bomber jackets, sigh, shiny.

car · 5 months ago

*happy dance to see a Petulant roundup*

Shev · 5 months ago

My cat is experimenting with new ways to make me feed her at whim. She woke me up at 4.30am by headbutting me. Then she gummed my arm (she is a rescue cat, and has no teeth). Then she spent half an hour leaping off my bed, runnning downstairs with the dainty footfall of a rhino, skittering across the wooden floor (presumably to the food bowl - and I only know this because I could HEAR HER all the way up the stairs), running back up the stairs, jumping onto me, meowing, then starting the merry-go-round again. After this got tiresome, she prodded my face a little bit, then crawled under the duvet to gum my knees.

I really hate to wake up, even when there are veritable cacophonies happening around me. I may have to start shutting her out of the bedroom.

InfamousQBert · 5 months ago

doin' the happy dance with car! what a wonderful start to the morning!

InfamousQBert · 5 months ago

also, excellent music choice. "who by fire" is gorgeous. i have an a capella version on the ole ipod. so pretty!

InfamousQBert · 5 months ago

i can't comment on blogger from work, so i'm leaving this here. if you want to contact fedex, regarding the suburban lesbian mom article, here's the page. it was a little hard to find.

http://news.van.fedex.com/contact

Icca · 5 months ago

Yay! This made my morning, glad to see you and your round-up :)

Jay in Oregon · 5 months ago

Hat tip to commenter Bad Girl's Filly at Balloon Juice for unearthing this gem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCw_UoRhTUk

I see you checkin’ me
Out on the dance floor
I know you want me boy, but you got something I want more
See, these are troubled times
A bad economy
I got some health issues, and medicine, well it ain’t free

I don’t care about your diamond rings
I don’t need none of those fancy things
If you really wanna be my man
Boy, you gotta put me on your health care plan!

Melissa McEwan · 5 months ago

Welcome back, Pet! :-)

Arkades · 5 months ago

We have 5 cats, three of whom are totally content to let me sleep as late as I want, one of whom is insistent on getting me up at the same time every single morning, and one whose behavior is somewhere in between, sometimes mellow, sometimes eager to awaken me.

Both of the wake-up-crew cats mainly employ headbutts and rubbing against me to wake me up. There's usually a bit of meowing, but I'm a deep enough sleeper that it barely registers. It's the headbutts and body-rubs that actually bring me to consciousness. And it's usually so endearing that I cannot be *too* upset about it, even when I'm craving the extra sleep.

Yet I know that cats do indeed tailor their vocalizations to better communicate with their human companions. I had a cat years ago who had a unique 'double meow' that served as a greeting. Many of our current cats chirp and trill (a Manx breed legacy) as well as meow. I can usually distinguish between several general classes of meaning: greeting sounds, pleased sounds, plaintive sounds, alarmed sounds, disgruntled sounds, and so forth.

What's most fascinating about feline vocalizations is that they aren't much used among cats themselves. Mother cats vocalize to their kittens frequently, but by the time a cat is an adult, most cat-to-cat communication is done through body language and/or scent marking.

It amazes me that cats recognize our human need to communicate vocally and adapt their behavior so that they can better communicate with us... that we can work out a system of cross-species communication at all is frankly astonishing. That the cats understand us well enough to further fine-tune their vocalization for maximum human-response-eliciting is impressive.

Chrysalis15 · 5 months ago

It amazes me that cats recognize our human need to communicate vocally and adapt their behavior so that they can better communicate with us... that we can work out a system of cross-species communication at all is frankly astonishing.

I agree, it's pretty awesome. I've also noticed that cats are more vocal when their owners talk to them more frequently. I used to have a neighbor who had four cats and she would pet them but didn't really talk to them at all... they were very quiet cats. My cat, on the other hand, I have been talking to since he was a kitten... and as a result he is now a loudmouth. My boyfriend's cat is the same way, he will carry on "conversations" that consist of things like...

"Mrrow"
"Oh hello, how was your day?"
"Meeerrow"
"Really? And then what happened?"
"Mrrrow. Mroww."
"Yeah?"
"Mrrow."

Ledasmom · 5 months ago

The most distinctive and instantly recognizable cat vocalization is, of course, the "wow-wow-wow-wow" moaning that precedes horking onto the carpet.
You can seriously weird out a cat by imitating this.

kaninchenzero · 5 months ago

After much practice and a lot of doing it wrong, I finally worked out how to purr myself, while both inhaling and exhaling. Humans tend to find it sexy as hell (though that might just be proximity; one has to be fairly close to hear it) but the cats look at me really weird for about half a second before running away.

ETA: Dear frog I hate Jeff Sessions. Racist fuckneck must be jizzing! in! his! pants! at the chance to call a Latina a racist in front of eight zillion cameras.

InfamousQBert · 5 months ago

ledasmom: you just almost made me snork my coffee. :)

ours each have a very distinct vocabulary.

meatball has a particular double-meow that means "play now?". if we make that noise, she will come running and look at you very expectantly. and then she'll play fetch with the bottle cap. it's disturbingly cute.

kitten's most distinct noises indicate his displeasure: a cheek puff/huff that means exactly what the human version means, and a long, loud whine that means "why are you here and why won't you leave me alone?"

monkey sounds the most like a person having a conversation, with lots of different tones and lengths.

jake only talks when he's having crazy time or about to hork something up (usually about 5 minutes into any car ride).

squeaker, well, she squeaks. mostly, she says "PET ME!!! PET ME NOW!!!"

kitten and meatball are the wake-up crew. their favored method involves kitten, the 17 lb wonder, jumping on me and demanding to be cuddled, while she gets up on the dresser and knocks stuff off. if that doesn't work, someone will find a book and proceed to destroy it.

Chrysalis15 · 5 months ago

More thoughts on cat meowing:

I enjoy weirding out my cats by playing youtube videos of other cats meowing. They freak out and keep trying to look under/around my computer to figure out where the cat is. Then they look at me and meow at me for not explaining the weirdness that is the cat in the computer.

Ledasmom · 5 months ago

My favorite cat noise is the chirp ours make if you touch them while they're relaxing. If they're very relaxed, you can get them to do this several times in a row.
We just lost our seventeen-year-old cat Edmund - he had the deepest purr I ever heard.

Shev · 5 months ago

Oh and dagnabbit! I totally meant to include in the earlier comment (but was sleep-deprived and forgetful owing to aforementioned attention-seeking cat) - welcome back Petulant, it is lovely to read your words here again.

Arkades · 5 months ago

(((Ledasmom))) my condolences.