By Elisa Black-Taylor
Why doesn’t my cat Coral meow? I ask myself that question every night as Coral jumps into my lap for some quality petting time. I’d like to tell her story, and then I hope some of you may have some answers for my non-vocal cat.
Coral has been with us for over two years now. She was rescued from Greenville County Animal Care Services back in 2011 at the same time we rescued a cat named Jane. One of my friends from New York who’s very involved with GCACS asked me if I could take both cats. Jane went on to find her own family, but Coral has decided to stay with us on a permanent basis.
Coral’s paperwork at the shelter listed her as a stray. My daughter and I believe she was a stray, mainly because of her ears. Her ears were full of ear mites. We took her to the vet and got the medicine to treat her. She passed her physical as far as being healthy, other than the infestation of the mites. It took a good month to get all the gunk cleaned out where she’d have pretty ears.
Laura and I often wonder why anyone would turn her into the shelter. She never meows, always uses the litter box and isn’t fussy about her cat food. In other words, Coral is the perfect cat. Except she’s quiet. We’ve heard a hiss or two out of her when one of the other cats try to intrude upon her petting time in Laura’s lap.
Coral was often called our cat with no personality. That was before she let us know how much she enjoys chasing a laser light. It’s the first toy she’s ever played with. And she loves to drink out of a faucet. I’m more likely to see her taking a drink from the tub faucet than from the water bowl.
Coral is also beautiful. Not that beautiful will keep a cat off of death row. You all may remember Coral from the comment I made on Michael’s article here about being able to pick your cat out of an I.D. parade.
I commented on confusing Furby with Coral all the time. From the rear, they look identical to me. Laura says Coral is a slightly lighter color. And if I pet her I can tell the difference. She’s our softest cat. Her name should have been Cashmere.
I wonder whether Coral could have been feral at one time, since feral cats are known for keeping silent. Her ears were certainly dirty enough for her to have lived outside for a long period of time. Perhaps someone who just enjoys trapping cats and turning them in to the shelter caught her. We’ll never know. And Coral refuses to give up secrets about her past.
We’ve only had one other cat who kept silent for a very long time. That was Sealy. We pretty much know he was a feral. He still has feral-like behavior, such as he enjoys prowling for food. It was close to eight months before he ever meowed, and that was when he wanted out of my bedroom and the door was closed. He’ll also jump on top of Laura and meow for his breakfast. For the record, Sealy has the LOUDEST meow of any of our cats. He just doesn’t “talk” very often.
Any ideas on why Coral doesn’t meow? She’s healthy and friendly otherwise. I’ve never had such a quiet cat.
No doubt, sleeping in that $120 cat bad bed that Furby and you won a few yrs back, Coral WILL find her own voice. Elisa, you should hope that she doesn’t find Sealy’s! ๐
I hope that she does; you know that she will! She has you, doesn’t she!
Off topic a bit, but you seem to like to mention the cat standard Shorthair breeds, both British and American [are their others?]. As a child, I was so very confused by this so-called “Shorthair” breed… it seemed to me through my visual instincts that all cats were shorthaired, unless they were Angoras or Persians. (And, at nine yrs old, I didn’t understand even those two, until I looked it up in the encyclopedias.)
Exactly, what it a domestic shorthair in the cat fancy world of breeding? [Thank you, Michael–if you choose to look at this with piqued interest. ;)]
Yes, I understand. It seems to be a bit trickier than a database of cat meows. You would have to layer them, wouldn’t you, but if you layer them with a bit of a program, write a shell or basic script in ruby or python or even, before you add the sound in to your main html and program on your site, couldn’t that possibly make it easier? or am I way off base here. (maybe that’s why I could not get auralfx. up and running, besides not having the resources with a database that huge.
How big would the DB have to be, Michael? (I blv it might be less than what I ws attempting?) ๐
A cat meow/sound database would be nice but hard to do. Recording sounds is tricky because cats don’t talk to order. Then you have to knit the sounds together and make a large audio file and so on. I do have a page on PoC of cats sounds. There are quite a lot of sounds.
Cat Sounds
My Shrimp’s vocal cords were impaired. He did not know anything from the hour that he was born, as far as I know, as my farmer friend asked me to take him. Kitten was emaciated, too weak to move, upper/lower respiratory, infected bite on the back btwn the shoulder blades and neck regions, eyes mattered shut, and limp in my arms, after we picked him up from under the yew shrub.
Shrimptaro did not meow –just opened his mouth wide in attempt–for two years. His vocal cords obviously came through finally. ๐ I was so happy for him. Do you think that my talking to him constantly helped? or was it due to my MuckaLucky who washed and prrr’d and meowed, always protecting him (she is eighteen, and has been spayed since eight wks)? Both, maybe? ๐
I very much like “Simon’s Song” just as much as before. It is one of those enduring, loving poems that is forever just so.
This meow database -MROWR!- an almost formidable task, but not quite. ๐ My last website was auralfx (.com), and was supposed to allow anybody internationally to access English pronunciations of words. The database for mrowrs, meows, etc. would not be nearly as immense…or would it? ๐ IMHO, positively this is doable. Michael?