When Do Most Cats Start to Meow?

Each cat learns to meow at different stages in their lives dependent on the circumstance and the individual cat but around 4-6 months might be the first time. When did your cat first meow?

First meow

My cat Gabriel has just uttered his first real meow. He is 4 months old. He has become more vocal. Until now he’d squeak and trill but no meow. I wasn’t concerned but interested. It made me think, when do cats start to meow? Do cats learn to meow? I ask the latter question because the experts say that cats don’t usually meow to each other. They only meow to us as a request.

If that is correct then it encourages me to believe that once a kitten has found his feet and gains confidence he’ll start to make requests of his human caretaker and start to communicate with her in response to calls, communications and other interactions. If this is a correct assessment, it would seem that around 4-6 months of age would be the time a young cat first delivers a real meow.

However, I am generalising. I have just seen a small kitten of about 10-weeks-of-age meowing in complaint because he was being given a bath. Perhaps in this instance the shock of that experience forced a meow from the lips of the little kitten.

This is obviously about individual cats and circumstances. They all play a role. Having lived in close proximity with my cat since I fostered and adopted him, about 3.5 months ago, I have been able to observe him closely.

My feeling is that he’s had to learn to meow. It is as if his vocal cords and brain were developing. His experiences developed his brain. His vocal cords and voice box are developing as he grows up. There comes a moment when these developments when added to confidence leads to the first meow.

Turning the clock back to the first month he was with me, he barely uttered a single sound. Pure silence. He’d open his mouth occasionally but no sound was delivered.

Some cats are almost always mute to semi-mute highlighting the individuality of this trait. British Shorthairs are a good example of semi-mute cats. Once again I am generalising. Many British SHs will be meowers. The ones that I have met have been silent. Their mouth open delivering the ‘silent meow’.

The Siamese is the opposite. This indicates that the frequency and quality of the meow is a characteristic which can be linked to cat breeds and therefore breeding.

Can you encourage a cat to meow for the first time by talking to him more? I don’t believe it is necessarily about talking to a young cat to make him meow. It is more about interacting with your cat. It is about stimulating his brain so that he feels inclined to vocalise. Exciting play will achieve that. Or providing him with his favorite food.

I’d suggest that the more a person interacts with his young cat, particularly in stimulating play, the more likely his cat will develop the urge and the anatomy to utter that first, exciting meow.

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Comments

When Do Most Cats Start to Meow? — 5 Comments

NANCY SCHWOPE on January 25, 2015 at 11:50 pm said:
Ahsan,I am so sorry.There are cruel people here that are just as mean to poor little animals. My kitten now got out the door and I didnt know it. He was 8 weeks then and that was the first time I heard him meow.He had his face in the window meowing loudly and wanting back in.
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Ahsan ul Haq on January 25, 2015 at 7:52 pm said:
received my four kittens of same litter at their age being 3 weeks. At the starting moments they were meowing with a request to feed them, they were hungry. I fed them lactose free milk and with tona and warm water mixed. They were very happy at that moment, and I can still recall the kittenhood of them. They became silent and when ever they needed food , they started meowing again.
Unfortunately, and sure within a cruel environment 🙁 three of them were killed by neighborhood boy.
I still dream them and I am a patient now 🙁
My kittens, 1) tiny Sajid 2) Puma (girl) 3) small TUMTUM all killed 🙁
My LAILA is still enjoying with us, she is so happy that we have released her and still release her out in terrace but she does not cross the terrace boundary and she just jumps through my legs and then in my arms.
Maybe she still remembers the cruelty of her sister and brothers … 🙁
YES! very true that the cat/ kittens meow when they need us or requests us in this way to help them, yes! very very true and thanks for the article Michael, You have many ideas of discussion through POC.org and I don’t know where you get these logical discussions??? but it feels me relaxed and sure I get the knowledge/ experience through your articles.
Thank you again <3
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Jo Singer on January 25, 2015 at 2:13 pm said:
Our cats rarely “meow” with a typical “meow” sound. Perhaps it’s because they are Oriental Shorthairs, but their vocalizations are more like “wows” and they can get very loud and resemble “singing” actually.
Occasionally one will utter a “mew”- which I think is basically a request to be fed .
I have heard that cats only “meow” to humans- and don’t “meow” to other cats. Nice article, Michael.
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- Michael Broad on January 25, 2015 at 4:46 pm said:
  Interesting Jo. Of all the cat vocalisations the meow is by far the best known but, as you state, there are many others and some are just as usual.
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Michele S. on January 25, 2015 at 1:42 pm said:
I think both nurture and nature come into play as to when a cat first meows or how vocal they are.
Sophie didn’t meow until she was a year old. She chirped a lot, but never meowed. When she was 6 months old we took in Merlin who was a chatterbox with the largest vocabulary of any cat I’ve ever known. Gradually Sophie began to meow, but it was more of a kitten like mewl. Whether she learned this from Merlin, I don’t know. Although she became a little more vocal with increasing age, she was never as chatty as him.
Personality will obviously have a bearing as some cats are more chatty than others. However, there’s also a theory that because cats mainly reserve meowing for humans, that the better you understand your cat’s body language, the less it will need to vocalise it’s requests of you.
We all like talking to our cats and they definitely have the memory and intelligence to learn a wide range of words. Just as we now know that cats use a “soliciting” purr to get what they want, I’m sure they quickly realise that certain other vocalisations will elicit the desired response from us.
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