According to the Guardian:
For those with a deep suspicion of cats and their motivations, this may well be the scientific proof they have been waiting for. New research has finally laid bare the degree to which cats exploit humans.
Instead of loud miaowing when they want food, behaviour likely to have them ejected from the bedroom, some cats disguise their cries for attention within an otherwise pleasant purr. The result, according to a study published tonight in the journal Current Biology, is a complex "solicitation" purr with a high-frequency element that triggers a sense of urgency in the human brain. Owners find it irritating, but not irritating enough to kick the cat out, and feel driven to respond.
. . .
However, not all cats have the cry; the researchers, who examined 10 cats, found it only in those living in single-person households. "We found that cats learn to dramatically emphasise the peak when dealing with human owners that have a one-on-one relationship," McComb said.
There's more at the link.
Miss D. and I have each been 'owned' by several cats during our lives so far, and we're currently regarded by Gremlin, Oleg's 'owner', as surrogate humans (we feed him, play with him and clean his litter-box when Oleg's out of town). These photographs of Gremlin were taken by Oleg - as if I needed to tell you that!
We're also friends with a neighborhood cat who keeps trying to persuade us that we really, really need a house-cat of our own, and he'd loooove to apply for the vacancy. I think we'll have to test this theory on them, and see what emerges.
Peter
3 comments:
Cool. I recently run into your blog, and being an aviation and firearm enthusiast of my own, found it interesting enough to put it into my RSS reader.
And now I see you personally know Oleg Volk, whose work I know and like for about a year or so.
It's wonderful how small the world is :)
Ah, Love, Gremlin does do that. The purr part is hard to hear when he's wrapped around your ankles and nudging you toward the food bowl, but rather clear when you're bending down with the plate of gooshyfood.
If you ever hear him over the phone, with the bass rumble of the purr not making it through the pass band, it sounds remarkably similar to a baby's cry. He has definitely practiced and experimented on the best way to get an artist to put down the camera and make food appear, and is getting as good at it as Oleg is as his own art.
Athena the Cat does the begging purr, with chirps tossed in for good measure. She does not meow or yowl, perhaps because she was orphaned after a predator got her dam and siblings and learned from their mistake.
LittleRed1
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