If Cats Could Learn To Read

Just a little flight of fantasy article today after all the depressing declawing stuff lately. I must admit I needed to cheer myself up by writing this and designing the classroom poster.

I’ve often thought how nice it would be for cats if they could read. I think cats sleep a lot out of boredom more than anything else, especially strictly indoor cats and even more so declawed cats, because what else can they do all day?

cat having fun
Poster by Ruth aka Kattaddorra
Two useful tags. Click either to see the articles: Toxic to cats | Dangers to cats

A cat’s caretaker can only spend a certain amount of time playing with their cat and grooming him, cats have quite a short attention span, they don’t always want constant attention. They may look out of the window for a while but even that must get a bit boring.

We humans can lose ourselves in a book and forget for a while our worries and grief, reading transports us to anywhere in the world.

Do cats think? Sometimes it looks to me as if they do when they have a pensive faraway look on their faces. Human minds are occupied all the time, even when we are asleep our minds are busy dreaming. We know cats dream too, so if they dream, maybe they also think.

We know cats love books, well yes OK mostly to sit on, especially when someone is reading that book. I didn’t pose Jozef in the photo I took a while ago, I’d just left my book with specs laid on it, on the table, to make a cup of tea and there he was when I returned!

cat reading
Poster by Ruth aka Kattaddorra

I did put the book by Walter and asked him nicely if he would pose for a photo, as you can see he didn’t co-operate, he merely knocked the book over.
He shares Babz bed at night and only allows her to read for so long before he marches up the bed and closes her book.

Could someone write a book in meow language? There are many different meows cat make, so first we’d need a meow alphabet.

Begin with the vowels: Meea Meee Meei Meeo Meeu

As for the consonants? Hmmmmm…….maybe not.

I don’t think we will ever fully understand feline language, so the lessons would need to be given by a feline teacher. But who would teach him first?

Would cats like stories about mice and bird and rabbits? Or about food and cat nip?

Imagine the adult cats literary class, it would be quite chaotic. The teacher cat would need a snooze after his dinner and the student cats would run amok.

Ruth aka Kattadorra

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16 thoughts on “If Cats Could Learn To Read”

  1. So cute, R.
    I needed that.

    Cats learning to read…
    Oh my. That’s all I need is for Damon to read the big book of, “Antics To Drive My Mom Even Crazier”.

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  2. I love the pictures of Jozef and Walter with the books. They look so studious. All cats want to study is how to catch more mice. Monty will be like an eager little pupil for me sometimes when I’m throwing a stick for him to chase or playing with him with his fishing pole toys. He certainly has the attitude that I am teaching him, as his mom would have taught him to hunt. Sometimes when I throw a toy just over his head and he jumps for it and catches it I think, “I’m teaching him to catch birds!”

    When my sister and I were little kids we used to play kitten school. We would pretend we were kittens going to school. The subjects weren’t reading and writing. We pretended to have to learn to chase and catch things. We would pretend we were baby kittens all the way from being inside the sac inside the mother’s womb (we’d crawl into our sleeping bags) to being born with eyes shut to getting older and having to go to kitten school. Amazing what kids will come up with when there’s nothing on tv! (We only had four channels back then and no computers!)

    Mythbusters, speaking of tv, did an episode on herding cats and found out you really can’t do it. Animals you can herd are generally prey animals, so their instinct is to stick together out of a need for preservation and safety from predators. A cat is one of nature’s best predators. They don’t have that instinct, they’re the ones hunting the animals that do! You cannot herd cats. I imagine it would be hard to teach school to cats. As much as Monty is a willing pupil when we play, he has a very short attention span.

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    • lol kitten school, what a lovely game, I wish I’d thought of that. It’s a wonder I didn’t as I was desperate for a cat but our dad was a dog man.
      I remember once being poorly and the doctor came out and asked me what was wrong, I said ‘Doctor I think I’m having kittens’ He never let me forget that even when I was a lot older.

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  3. Wow how cool, it be great if Cats could read, this is so way cool. Love it. Be great if they could read bedtime stories. 🙂

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      • I doubt it. Monty seems to have a built in cat radar that informs him the moment I drift off to sleep so he can come meow into my ear.

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        • Interesting, sometimes watch Jasmine looking at T.v, and looking up at it with her Paw I wander if she knows whats going on.

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  4. Ah cats that can read and with thumbs to flip the pages unless of course they had a Kindle. Perhaps that’s it! Of course a Kindle of kittens! Lol 🙂

    Lovely article Ruth and love the pictures 🙂

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  5. I think the classes would be unruly, there’s an expression “It’s like trying to herd cats” when something is impossible to achieve, well I think teaching cats would be like that because they do have short attention spans (other than when mouse watching)but how lovely it would be for them to have a cat’s equivalent of a good book to read, I know it’s a huge pleasure to me to curl up in bed with a book, but how to teach them to read is beyond me. There again as Walter has been known to come up the bed and head-butt my book out of my hand maybe he doesn’t care much for the idea at all. I’d love to be a fly on the wall of the imaginary cat’s classroom but I’m sure I would distract them and cause total chaos LOL. Nice one Ruth, it’s good to have a break from serious subjects sometimes.

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  6. A classroom full of school kittens. A nightmare. I love that poster. In some ways cats do read. They read the lie of land and can read what is going on through subtle signals but it would certainly be nice if they could read a book.

    They’d have to study human behavior and be totally mystified by it. They’d do research and studies and scratch their heads. 😉

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    • ZOMC!!!! this post is just way too funny!!! I was ROFLMTO!!!!!!!! But seriously, oh my if cats could read. . .they believe they are smarter now. . . could you imagine if they could read??!!! But that is why I love them so. . .they ARE smart, and VERY entertaining!!!! I think tey would take over show business if they could read — MOL!! <3

      Reply

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