Domestic cats don’t chuff. Tigers chuff. It is a form of communication made at close range and part of the tiger’s greeting behaviour. The tiger chuff is sometimes described as a ‘prusten’. I believe that they are the same sound. It is a staccato puffing sound.
There may be some confusion because on the internet there is a video (see below) which Google picks up and presents on the first page of its search results of a domestic cat making a sound which is described as chuffing.
This is not chuffing in my opinion. Domestic cats do not chuff as mentioned. This is a cat chattering at the sight and sound of his or her owner making a clicking sound with an object which is out of the frame and which creates a response in the cat as if he is looking at a bird.
You may have seen domestic cats chattering (see a page on this). Domestic cats often look out of the window at a bird and they may start chattering their jaws. It is believed that this is domestic cats practising the killing bite into the nape of a bird’s neck to kill it. Because the cat is unable to get at the bird he simply chatters as an act of frustration and practice – a “tooth-rattling stutter”. In this instance the cat is making a sound at the same time. Perhaps it is a vestigial you form of purring because he is content which when combined with the chattering produces what the videomaker has described as a chuff.
To reiterate, domestic cats do not chuff. The word chuff relates exclusively to the close range conversation between much larger cats, in this instance the tiger.
SOME PAGES ON CAT SOUNDS:
The word ‘chuff’ describes a wild cat sound. The domestic cat meow is very variable but it is still a form of meow. It is about semantics. Do what you like. I am correct.
I’ve seen articles saying some cats do chuff. The only ones I’m finding that say cats don’t chuff are your posts. Have you pursued in veterinary sciences? There are accounts of people’s vets even telling them that their cat is chuffing, and I’d assume a vet, or multiple in this case, knows the difference between a chuff and a chatter. Absolutely no offense to you, you can believe whatever you want no matter how right or wrong you are, but I’m going to listen to veterinarians over some guy on the internet who just insists he’s not wrong.