Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Cross-Species Conversations ...


One of our cats, Karma ( the youngest of the four ), has turned out to be quite a talker. A veritable little motor-mouth actually. If he's not sleeping or eating you can count on him having an opinion about what's going on in the household. He's a clever little guy, ever curious about the workings of the universe, and like any other two year old his favorite question is "Why?"
I'll concede that I'm guilty of anthropomorphizing to a degree, but the range of his communicative abilities is truly amazing - there's never any question about what he's trying to get across. A maestro of tonal inflection, he maintains a running commentary as he follows inquisitively in our wake. There's the chirp that translates as "Hi! Nice to see you!". The rising mew that for all intents and purposes has a question mark embedded, that he uses when he's clearly baffled about something. The forlornly drawn-out whine when evening draws near and we impose a curfew ( we have wolves and cougar around here, so when the sun goes down and we're no longer outdoors we make sure the family critters come in as well ). The list goes on. And on. And ON... sometimes my husband and I wish he had a mute button.
However, most of the time we enjoy his verbosity - it's endearing. He's quite a little character, an extroverted  gremlin with a contagious sense of fun.
We enjoy our conversations.