The Many Voices of Isabella

I think the most exciting thing to happen around here lately occurred this morning when Isabella did something completely unexpected: she let me sleep.

She first tried to wake me up around 3:30 a.m. Normally, once Isabella decides it is time for breakfast, she can be very persistent. This morning, however, she apparently reconsidered. She settled down beside me and patiently waited for me to wake up on my own.

That led to two surprises.

The first came when I rolled over and felt something furry beside me. Usually, if Isabella is that close to my head in the early morning hours, she is meowing at me and doing everything she can to wake me up. Instead, she was just lying there quietly.

The second surprise came when I looked at the clock: 4:45 a.m.

She had let me sleep for more than an hour after her first attempt to wake me. Since she had been such a good and patient girl, I got up and fed her before making myself a cup of coffee.

All of this got me thinking about something I’ve wondered about for years. I have a question for all my fellow cat owners out there: Have you ever had a cat that whispers?

Isabella does.

In fact, Isabella seems to have five different levels of meowing, and after ten years together, I know what most of them mean.

At the quietest level, she whispers. Sometimes almost no sound comes out at all; other times she makes a tiny little “ack ack” noise.

The next level is a short, high-pitched meow. It’s still very soft and usually just enough to let me know she wants my attention.

Then there is what I think of as her unhappy meow. It’s slightly louder and has a plaintive quality to it, almost as if she’s crying. This is the sound she makes when something is not going according to Isabella’s plans.

After that comes what I would consider a normal cat’s meow. Oddly enough, this is probably the one I hear least often. Even at her normal volume, Isabella is usually fairly soft-spoken.

And then there is THE MEOW.

Isabella reserves this one for those moments when she can hear me but can’t see me. If I’m on the other side of a closed door, for example, subtlety goes right out the window. She also uses it when she’s in her cat carrier and the carrier starts moving. Put that carrier in a moving car, and Isabella makes sure that everyone within hearing distance knows exactly how she feels about the situation.

The whispering, though, is unlike anything I’ve ever heard from another cat I’ve had.

My previous cat, Victoria, had essentially one volume: loud. She was part Siamese, and instead of a traditional “meow,” she had that distinctive Siamese “YEOW!” If Victoria had something to say, there was never any question about whether you were going to hear it. Isabella, by comparison, has an entire vocabulary of little whispers, squeaks, cries, meows, and, when necessary, full-volume protests.

I think anyone who has lived with a cat long enough eventually learns that cats have a language all their own. We begin to recognize that one sound means “I’m hungry,” another means “Where are you?” and another means “Something is terribly wrong, and by terribly wrong I mean that you’ve closed a door between us.”

They learn our language, too. Maybe they don’t understand every word we say, but they certainly learn particular words, sounds, tones of voice, and routines. Somehow, over the years, we develop a language together.

This morning, though, Isabella didn’t need to make a sound at all.

She simply curled up beside me and waited.

For a cat who usually believes breakfast should be served promptly at 4 a.m.—if not earlier—that may have been the most eloquent thing she could have said.