Minerva talks to us
April 12, 2002
One of the most endearing things is when my cat Minerva is on the enclosed porch and she sees one of us at the door looking at her, she talks to us with that rapid Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah sound cats usually make when they see birds. She started doing it a year ago. She looks straight at us and then usually blinks at us, sometimes striking a very cute pose showing her belly. We do the noise back to her and she replies, varying the rhythm and pitch a bit each time. This can go on for a quite a conversation. It seems she is thinking it’s fun to see if we can imitate her various rhythms and pitches and then her imitating ours that we make up. She always adds on to the rhythmic melody we make, and then we copy that, or try to. It really amazing how cats will interact with people, more than one would expect and in different ways than one would expect. It’s fun playing the “rhythm melody game” with Minerva.