We like to think of meowing as "cat talk." Essentially, dogs talk by barking and cats talk by meowing, and that's essentially what we're taught even as little kids. But just because the sound comes out of their mouths like it does with words for humans doesn't mean that it's talking, per se.
In fact, animals vocalize when they want to communicate with humans. Cats in particular don't communicate with each other through meowing, purring, or any other sounds. One exception is kittens: they do meow to let their mother know they want more milk or purr to get her to lie still while they're suckling. Aside from that, meows are a way for cats to talk to us humans.
Cats only communicate with other cats (namely, their mothers) in infancy. After that, they adapt that behavior in adulthood to "talking" to humans. John Bradshaw, author of "Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet," explained to NPR that cats don't express emotions with either purring or meowing.
"Signals like the purr, because it is a signal, it's giving out a message, and it's trying to get you to do something, and they don't evolve just to convey emotions, not in the animal world, anyway." Cats will vocalize when they're happy, distressed, or want something. "But again," Bradshaw notes, "it's a signal to the animals, the people around them to pay attention and try and help them."
We, humans, speak in many different languages and a variety of different accents. Even the same English language sounds different in varying parts of the U.S. We'll get even more distinct pronunciations in the UK, New Zealand, or Australia, let alone in India or Jamaica.
Interestingly, cats might also have "accents." Scientists theorize that cats adopt certain phonetic features of their "meows" in accordance with what their owners react to. Depending on where the cat lives, that might mean that a cat from Texas meows very differently than a posh cat from Kensington.
Those who research cat meows already know that domestic cats have a bigger variety of meows and purrs than their wild cat cousins. Thus, they theorize that domestication and human interaction change the way cats vocalize. After all, they have to adapt to us, humans, to understand them. If their owner uses long vowels in their language, they might automatically respond more to similar sounds from their owner.
In 2016, a Swedish researcher from Lund University, Susanne Schötz, began exploring the differences in melody and sound in cat communication. She is looking at cats from two opposite regions in Sweden, the north and the south, to see if their owners' distinct dialects will transfer to the cats as well.
"Many cats and their human companions seem to develop a pidgin language in order to communicate better," Schötz told National Geographic in 2016. "We don't know whether there are similarities in the languages or whether they're specific to a cat/human pair."
"Maybe certain breeds will use certain melodies, or cats living in countries where human speech has certain melodic patterns will vocalize differently. If we can find that cats adopt these melodies, we may be able to help cat owners interpret these signals better."
