In the world I live in, just about everything has a voice. Granted, trees, rocks and the like don't have an audible "voice" -- most of the time -- but they speak to me in different ways. Other things do have an auditory quality that I can physically hear and to which I can respond. Voices of familiar people, friends, family, co-workers, even people I've never met but whose voices I can pick out without seeing their faces, like HM the Queen, JFK, our Presiding Bishop, or any of a number of personalities such as Oprah, Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite or Desmond Tutu. Dogs bark, birds chirp (or trill), cows moo, chickens cluck and cats meow --- well, most of them do, anyway.
My three boys all have different "voices". Yes, they do make sounds that sometimes sound like "meow" but usually there are more subtleties. My late Maggie always showed her British disdain with a single comment, "MEH!" Come to think of it, that was her only comment to just about everything but her little folded ears made up for any linguistic shortcomings. Of the current clutter, Domi, the smallest, has the highest pitch and usually only speaks in no more than two syllables or less. Most of his conversation takes place about 4am when he thinks I should get up and start fixing breakfast. He punctuates his statements by stomping across my midsection or leg just for emphasis but as a conversationalist, he's a man of few words.
Gandhi is a bathroom singer; he generally prefers the acoustics in there for his occasional bursts of vocalizations although he seems stuck in a rut with repeating the same phrase over and over, seldom changing a whisker of inflection. His only other conversation is a "mwrooowf" while jumping up on the desk, anticipating a distribution of cat-communion in the form of treats or the sound of a cat food can being ripped off.
Sama, however, is the true singer. I swear, this cat has a range of nearly an octave and often incorporates four or five notes on each utterance, no matter how simple. In the world of cat singers, he is the Pavarotti, the Caruso, the Bocelli and the Josh Groban all rolled into one. Ok, so there may only be a half-step between notes, but it's a far cry from a one-note, one-syllable call or response. Like his brother, he seems to feel that between 4-5am is a proper time to begin at one end of the house and comment with every step to the other end where my bedroom lies. The announcement that he is jumping up on the bed (often right on top of me) is a five-note, 4-inflection sentence that continues as he marches up to check out my nose before batting at his brother and then taking off at top speed across my leg (complete with my own two-note, 3-curse response to the pinpricks of claws on said leg) before starting the whole thing again a few minutes later. Sleep late on weekends? What's that? I'd be happy if I could teach him that the alarm clock WILL go off in plenty of time for him to get fed before he expires of advanced starvation since dinner last night and the emptying of the bowl of kibbles as snacks during the night. I could throw the alarm clock out and just use the cat; he's just as reliable about going off at a specified time -- his specified time.
It doesn't take much to start him singing. "I'm gonna get you, brother!" "What are you doing, Mom?" "Where are you?" (that one usually part of the 4am ritual and he knows darned good and well where I am! I'm SLEEPING -- or trying to). For all I know he could also be doing a running commentary on everything from the fact that the hummingbirds out on the feeder are getting rambunctious to the latest loss by the Cubs or his opinion of politics (I think he's more of a Republicat than a Democat). He can't just say one sentence; he has to make a whole speech about whatever it is. Most of the time I let him talk, but after about the fourth reiteration of whatever is on his mind I just start yelling, "I GET it already!!!!!!!!" It never works. He stops singing when he gets finished. Threats, occasional squirts from the water sprayer, nothing stops him until he's finished the speech, aria or candid comments. And all this done in a series of utterances, often quite different from the one before or the one after, and all on a series of notes that, transcribed, would be the equivalent of a Mozart aria. Ok, maybe a Josh Groban ballad.
All my boys have different voices, but none have the flair for conversation Sama does.
MRRrrr-oowh-eeEEeeEH?
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