Inter-species communication

littlegreenman

I have 2 cats, but they have both developed their own verbal and non-verbal ways of communicating their wants/ needs.

The Doofman verbalises wanting to go out with a loud meow that sounds like "out!" (not necessarily anywhere near a door), and wants in with one that sounds remarkably like "Hello!!!". Wanting food is always a tug on my left sleeve with a gentle claw.

Little Missy rarely speaks but uses different types of headbuts and nudges to indicate the same.

Doof grew up with us humans, whereas Missy was with us for a few months as a feral kitten before escaping to live wild for 10 years+, then remarkably returning "home" earlier this year and settling right back into the same spot she left.  She'd been feral the entire time, and took 6 months to coax back before she seemed to remember where home was. She is slowly learning how to meow as it's not something cats use much in the wild. Her first efforts were croaky "yaks".

They both seem to understand stuff like "I'll be back in a bit", and "see you later, I'm off to work"! The former gets me followed halfway to the catfood shop, the latter has them stay put in the yard.

Anyone else "talk" to their pets ?

octatonic

Scarlett and I know each other well.
I know her 'someone is at the door bark' vs her 'I need a poo' bark.

axisus

David Cameron can communicate with pigs I hear

boogieman

Our Lab has different barks and noises for different things. 90% of them are "feed me" related though. Our cats also come and stare at us when they want to go out. 

HAL9000

The dogs are certainly able to communicate when they're hungry. More bizarrely though whenever the phone or the doorbell rings the dogs think it's for them.

digitalscream

Our dogs all communicate pretty well with each other, to the point where Peanut (the new addition) has been receiving quite a bit of tuition from Coco on how to properly behave like a dog. It's actually pretty astonishing to watch; Peanut has never been around dogs other than her litter mates (and she was taken away from them way too early, apparently), so until she came here she'd never really had a chance to socialise and learn all this stuff. In the last week, she's gone from a weird combination of shut down and feral to being a well-mannered dog who functions well within our canine family.

That aside, Mac (our older husky-collie-GSD mix, 12-13yrs old) has developed a lot of communication skills; if I'm sitting on the sofa, he's got a whole range of signals (facial expressions, vocalisations and paw taps) to distinctly tell me what he wants - hungry, thirsty, wants to go out for a pee, wants to go out for a poo, wants to go out the back or front, wants to play...even when he wants us all to go to bed. The point is that we've never explicitly taught him these things...if anything, he taught us.

ESBlonde

Our drummer grunts when he wants more beer.

Skipped

I often ask the Slugs in my garden to critique the Government's Brexit strategy.

Alnico

All the time.
Millie is like Gromit, she doesn't need much of a voice to communicate with us.
She's amazing. She's a rescue cat who had a terrible life before she dragged herself to our door and meow'd like hell until Natasha opened it and found her. From that point in her life she's gradually learned about love, care and being part of a Family and she loves it.
So do we.

Cheek rubs mean hello, i want food
Cheek rubs with a curly tail like a question mark means i love you and i want attention and fuss
Prancing around in front of the fridge means, i know you keep the treats up there on top of the fridge and i want one !
I get cheek rubs to wake me up, normally at 4am and quite a lot of the time it's to play 'Hairband' with her, but she still knows what to do to communicate with us.

She's an indoor cat but we're on the top floor of a 4 story block and she has the whole top floor to herself. She doesn't like being outside after her old life of being locked out without food for days on end (among other awful things) so she sleeps in the sun on the windowsill and spends the rest of her time generally making the place look pretty and sleeping some more.

I don't know what i would do without her.

Emp_Fab

Pugsley just sends me texts with a shopping list.

RandallFlagg

My wife is getting pretty good, she can string a few intelligible sentences together now that are worth listening to. I rescued her from the gutter and a council house upbringing and moved her to a more upmarket part of town so she's getting quite domesticated now. 

Garthy

Wild dogs don't bark at each other, it's a form of communication developed by domestic dogs to talk to us.

Sporky

Sprocket has a bell she rings when she wants to go out to the garden - it hangs on the back door handle.

Gassage

Winnie will come and bark at you if she wants something. You then follow her- she will go to food or water bowl, lead or back door, depending on her need.

She's not that well developed yet but if she barks twice it means she wants me to use the 2290 not the TES, 3 times and it's the Lazy J40 over the Hiwatt.

SteveRobinson

Yes, our old cat definitely has different meows for "out", "hello" (which sound like the words) and "feed me".

FelineGuitars

sticker

Dylan will tap his paw twice on my chair if he wants to come up for a cuddle or tap my foot twice and run away to the front door if he wants a walk or to the living room rug if he wants to play .

He also sings along with Ylvis "what does the fox say " but that's another story ...

Nitefly

RandallFlagg said:

My wife is getting pretty good, she can string a few intelligible sentences together now that are worth listening to. I rescued her from the gutter and a council house upbringing and moved her to a more upmarket part of town so she's getting quite domesticated now. 

Potty training next, then?

digitalscream

Sporky said:

Sprocket has a bell she rings when she wants to go out to the garden - it hangs on the back door handle.

Did you do that at my suggestion? Because if so...you're the first person to ever listen to me on that one

ThePrettyDamned

For a moment I thought this thread may be about trans-species. 

fields5069

digitalscream said:

Sporky said:

Sprocket has a bell she rings when she wants to go out to the garden - it hangs on the back door handle.

Did you do that at my suggestion? Because if so...you're the first person to ever listen to me on that one

I was considering doing that for our Cavachon. They have average intelligence so should have been possible, however what we did for a few years was simply leave the back door open. Teddy's reaction to finding a closed back door was usually to pee on the carpet, however in the past year or so (he's 4) he has started to come looking for a human to follow him and let him out.