Your Cat Recognises Your Voice

Your cat recognises your voice. If you are talking to someone in a different room or place to where your cat is, your cat may want to join in. This certainly applies to me. If my cat is in the living room and I’m in a bedroom talking to someone, he’ll start talking to me. He wants to be involved and he might think I am talking to him. He’ll go on talking to me until I go to him or he comes to me.

This is what may have happened when the person presenting this video was interrupted by his adorable cat (Note – 1: I have presumed that this cat is connected to the person in the video. It certainly looks that way).

This cat also puts his paw into his human companion’s mouth. That may be significant. I am not sure what it indicates. It may be an indication of how important sound is to a domestic cat.

When I lived with Binnie, on two, rare occasions, I placed her in a boarding cattery when I went away. When I returned to pick her up and called out to her, as I approached her enclosure, she would prick up her ears and look at me from a distance. This is nothing exceptional. It is simply that my cat had recognized my voice.

The sound of our voice is important to our cat; that and the way we smell (our scent). To our cat, our sound is our label as is our scent. I have always thought that our voices should be “melodious”! What I mean is, gentle and pleasant sounding. However some people say it should be high pitched because cats hear frequencies that are higher than we can hear.

I don’t think it matters that much, except it should be friendly and warm. There is a well known video of a cat doing the exact opposite, which is another example of the seedy side of YouTube. Cats learn to associate the sound of your voice with pleasant experiences if you’re a good cat caretaker. This makes life nicer for a cat when you talk.

Note – 2: I’d like to thank Dan for showing me the video, which gave me the idea for this post.

6 thoughts on “Your Cat Recognises Your Voice”

  1. The author of the best comment will receive an Amazon gift of their choice at Christmas! Please comment as they can add to the article and pass on your valuable experience.
  2. Mr Grey came to visit us every day for food but he was so frightened he would run away and come back after I had gone indoors 🙁 (Mr Grey is a feral/stray) I would always talk to him and eventually he would run less and less further until a week or so ago he let me fuss him not scared at all. I think he became used to my voice and knew I wasn’t going to hurt him. I havent seen him for a few days now 🙁 I think his cat flu may have got the better of him I was waiting for him to trust me enough to take him to the vets but now I may not need too….. I hope he comes back I would love to get him treated to make him more comfortable 🙁

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  3. Oh they know my voice 🙂 in particular my new boy Quentin… the moment he hears a good morning from me he comes running ahead of all the others 🙂

    Thank you for posting!

    Love and Light
    Carol

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  4. I used to sing to the ferals Babz and I TNR when we were CP feral officers, it usually calmed them down a bit as they were naturally terrified when in the trap cage wondering what was going to happen to them.
    It was the most wonderful feeling when we were able to take them back after neutering and they realised they had their freedom back after we made sure someone would feed them every day.
    I miss that now I’m past my sell by date for so much physical voluntary work 🙁

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  5. I used to sing to Monty when I fed him. I don’t always do it now, but he remembers. I teach a flute student in my home on Monday evenings. Monty is very frightened of children. He just doesn’t know what to make of these small humans. When my student’s younger sister walked in Monty puffed to twice his size in fright and the little girl got pretty frightened at the sight of him doing that. But during the lesson Monty came into the front room a couple of times. He’s been doing it quite consistently now– coming in looking around, disappearing again. I think it’s because I often sing how a musical phrase should go as I’m teaching. A person playing any type of instrument should be able to make it “sing.” I think it’s the singing that keeps drawing Monty out of hiding. He remembers hearing singing and being fed.

    Monty puts his paw on my mouth like that when he’s trying to get me up and out of bed. “Mamma’s tired,” I say and he puts his paw on my mouth like he doesn’t want to hear excuses.

    Monty recognizes voices of people he does not like. My husband was talking to his mother on the phone and Monty started growling. He hates Jeff’s parents. We think it is because they usually stay overnight. But even without seeing them, just hearing a voice faintly through a telephone, he was growling his displeasure.

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  6. Cats recognise voices sooner than they do appearances.
    Walter and Jozef and I often wait in our front garden for Babz coming home from work as they love to meet her. Sometimes they sit on the wall watching along the Grove and as she walks nearer they start looking interested, but not until she shouts ‘Hello boyz’ do they run to her.
    They probably know the time she is coming and that it will be her approaching but I love the way they make sure first that it isn’t a stranger coming.

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