← Twenty Thousand Hertz
Twenty Thousand Hertz
Cat Translation Guide
00:41:44
How to decode your cat’s meows, chirrups, and chitters.
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- [00:01]
Dallas Taylor
Multiple studies have found that owning a pet can help you live a longer and healthier life. But pet or no pet, nothing beats regular checkups. And that's where ZocDoc comes in. ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can find and book high quality in network doctors instantly. With over 100,000 providers across every specialty, you can get appointments within 24 to 72 hours or even the same day. Visit Zocdoc.com 20K to book your top rated doctor today. That's Zocdoc.com you're listening to 20,000 Hz. I'm Dallas Taylor. As humans, we love our cats. Nearly 43 million households in the US alone have a pet cat. And there are about 350 million pet cats around the world. But just because we love them, that doesn't always mean that we understand them. Cats can be very vocal creatures, but the exact, the meaning and intention behind these sounds can often be hard to read.
- [01:12]
Layla Battison
The thing is, as much as we love our cats, they don't always seem to reciprocate. Certainly not the way dogs do.
- [01:18]
Dallas Taylor
That's 20,000 hertz. Producer Layla Battison.
- [01:21]
Layla Battison
They've got a bit of a reputation for being aloof, standoffish, or at least fiercely independent.
- [01:28]
Dr. Sarah Brown
They're not innately sociable.
- [01:30]
Layla Battison
That's Dr. Sarah Brown.
- [01:32]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Some of them are better at it than others. Nothing, to say the least.
- [01:35]
Layla Battison
Sarah has been researching cat behavior for over 30 years and is the author of a book called the Hidden Language of Cats. She says the key to understanding your cat is to walk a mile in their paws.
- [01:47]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Cats come from a solitary ancestor. Unlike dogs, which had a preformed set of social signals inherited from their wolf ancestors, with cats, their behavior is a little bit more subtle and a bit harder to read.
- [02:02]
Layla Battison
Sometimes, in fact, us humans are totally oblivious to most of the communication going on between them.
- [02:09]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Cats go to way of communicating is by a scent. They would leave a scent for another wild cat to pick up later and keep their distance from each other. So to come from that to living amongst other cats and amongst people, the domestic cat has had to develop new ways of communicating.
- [02:31]
Layla Battison
In the natural world, cats tend to be fairly quiet.
- [02:35]
Dr. Sarah Brown
It makes sense because in the wild you don't want to make a lot of noise and bring attention to yourself.
- [02:41]
Layla Battison
Cats are in the uniquely tricky situation of being predators, but also still small enough to be prey to bigger hunters.
- [02:48]
Dr. Sarah Brown
If you're a small feline, you want to be able to catch things and not bring attention to your prey. So that you miss them and you don't want to be caught by anything else. So predator and prey species tend to be quiet when they're in the wild.
- [03:03]
Layla Battison
Most of the time, cats make different noises with each other than they do with us.
- [03:08]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Cats communicating with other cats very rarely. Meow cats mostly reserve their vocalizations for three types of occasions, and that is one, finding a mate, two, fighting, and three, mother kitten communications. Those first two are very noisy, and it's that last set of noises, the mother kitten sounds, that people most enjoy. And these seems to be the vocalizations that cats have carried through into interacting with people. So the meows, the trills and the chirrups, the little gentle sounds.
- [03:49]
Layla Battison
Over the millennia, cats have had to hone in on the kind of communication that we're used to, which is sound.
- [03:55]
Dr. Sarah Brown
And this is probably because we don't really understand or notice half the other things they do to us. We don't notice their scent deposits. We don't always notice their tail signals. And they know that, just as when they meow to their mother when they're kittens, that when they meow at us, it gets our attention.
- [04:13]
Layla Battison
Sarah has seen feral cats figure this out in real time.
- [04:17]
Dr. Sarah Brown
One of the cats in the colony that I studied, he would come and sit near me every night when I fed the colony. And he was probably the tamest of all of them, but he would always keep his distance. And then one day he just meowed at me. It worked out that that was a way of communicating with me. And I just think that's just amazing that they worked that out.
- [04:38]
Layla Battison
Since cats were first domesticated, the meow itself has evolved. And today it's strikingly close to a sound that we have evolved to care about.
- [04:47]
Dr. Sarah Brown
The average pitch of an adult domestic cats Meow is around 600 hertz. And interestingly enough, the cries of a healthy human baby average out at about 400-600Hz as well, which might not sound very astonishing, except for that if you record the meows of an African wild cat, which is the ancestor of the domestic cat, they come in at around 255Hz, so much lower pitch than the domestic cat and so pitched about the same level. Both cat meows and baby cries seem to be particularly hard to ignore.
- [05:30]
Layla Battison
This vocal manipulation works both ways.
- [05:34]
Dr. Sarah Brown
People change their tone of voice when they speak to a cat or a dog to a much higher pitch, similar to the way we speak to babies. We speak more slowly and we speak like this, oh, you know, how are you? But why we use it to speak to cats and dogs is a bit of a mystery. Do we think that there are babies, or are we trying to emulate their higher pitch meows so that they recognize that we're talking to them?
- [06:00]
Layla Battison
Whatever the reason, cats do recognize this baby talk.
- [06:06]
Dr. Sarah Brown
One study showed that when listening to their owner speak, they could tell the difference between speech directed deliberately at them.
- [06:14]
Kendra Baker
Come here, kitty, ready for dinner.
- [06:16]
Dr. Sarah Brown
And normal speech that people use with other adults.
- [06:19]
Layla Battison
But even if a cat knows you're talking to it, how much does it actually understand?
- [06:24]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Quite often, they appear not to understand a single word we say. Right. But they have started to do more studies on what exactly cats can understand. One of the things they've found out is that they can recognize the voice of their owner from other people's voices, and they also recognize their names. They can pick out their name from a series of other words that sound similar.
- [06:47]
Layla Battison
But compared to dogs, it can be hard to confirm when a cat really understands something.
- [06:53]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Part of the reason is that they don't respond like dogs, where they come running up as soon as you say their name. They might twitch their ears a bit more when you say their name, or they might turn their head. But they have a very more subtle way of responding to anything we say. And so we do often think they're ignoring us. But I think they hear and understand a lot more than they let on.
- [07:15]
Layla Battison
We can hardly blame cats for not understanding us, though, when we fare a little better when trying to decode their meows.
- [07:21]
Dr. Sarah Brown
If you record a bunch of meows in different contexts, so say you record a greeting meow on a meow where a cat's in a cat carrier. So it's sad if you play these meows back to people without any visual context, they find it really hard to identify the context.
- [07:40]
Layla Battison
But the rate of success does increase when owners are listening to the meows of their own cat.
- [07:45]
Dr. Sarah Brown
This sort of shows that people and their cats develop gradually a way of communicating. So the cat gradually realizes what works on their person, and the person gradually recognizes a particular meow.
- [07:58]
Layla Battison
When trying to decode a cat's meow, there are some general patterns that you can listen for.
- [08:03]
Dr. Sarah Brown
So a positive meow, like any greeting or if it wants to be fed, the pitch will rise towards the end of meow, and a distressed meow, like traveling in a cat carrier or going to the vet, will fall in pitch.
- [08:19]
Layla Battison
Beyond this, the key to understanding cats is in their body language. You can start with the ears.
- [08:27]
Dr. Sarah Brown
So ears are very mobile. They move from one position to another. So Quickly that you don't know if the cat's just listening to something or whether it's moody is changing very quickly. But basically, if they're upright, that's usually alert and happy and quite content. If the ears are swiveled backwards, that is usually an aggressive type stance. That usually means they're feeling quite angry. And if the ears are very flat, sort of proper aeroplane flat ears, that's usually a fear type position. And they're often crouched with their ears really flat to their head.
- [09:00]
Layla Battison
Making yourself smaller when you're frightened is a natural response of lots of wild animals. Using your body language to say, please don't notice me.
- [09:09]
Dr. Sarah Brown
And conversely, when they're feeling aggressive, their fur literally fluffs up and they stand sideways and do that sort of arched position with their tail fluffed up to make themselves appear as big as possible to their opponent.
- [09:25]
Layla Battison
Fear and aggression are often accompanied by some of cat's most noisy, unpleasant sounds like growls, yowls and hisses. These are all basically ways of saying, back off, don't mess with me. But all being well, your neighborhood cat won't consider you their enemy. And a chance interaction is likely to begin with a raised tail.
- [09:54]
Dr. Sarah Brown
The raised tail is a greeting signal and it means, basically, I come in peace.
- [09:59]
Layla Battison
In this, our pet cats have something in common with a much more formidable feline.
- [10:04]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Out of all the cat species in all the world, there's only two that have this tail up signal, and that is the lion and the domestic cat. And interestingly, those are the only two species that have a social structure.
- [10:19]
Layla Battison
Whereas cougars, leopards and cheetahs all live in relative isolation from one another, lions and wild domestic cats tend to live in groups.
- [10:27]
Dr. Sarah Brown
They think that the tail up signal has evolved separately in these two species, having to have signals that other cats could see and understand. It's like, well, what can we use to make a signal to each other? And I'll use my tail.
- [10:42]
Layla Battison
In domestic cats, that raised tail can often be accompanied by a sound called a trill or a chirrup.
- [10:49]
Dr. Sarah Brown
So they originate from the sound that a mother cat uses to her kittens when she returns to the nest in the wild. She makes this beautiful chirrup sound. Actually, they found out that kittens can actually recognize their own mother's chirrup from other mothers. Chirrups. So they know from a very young age that this is their mum making that noise. Adult cats use this same sound to us in greeting. Really. So you might walk into a room and your cat goes, and often they weave it in with meows as well. So there might be a sort of a meow trill going on, which is a happy greeting sound.
- [11:25]
Layla Battison
What comes next is basically the cat version of a handshake. When it rubs its face against your hand or leg.
- [11:32]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Yeah, it's a greeting behavior, but it also has an element of center in it. They have glands all around their faces so that when they rub on something, they're depositing their scent on either an object or another cat or a person.
- [11:43]
Layla Battison
The rub becomes an invitation for more body contact. But the trick is to let the cat take the lead.
- [11:49]
Dr. Sarah Brown
There's been studies that show that interactions that are started by the cat last longer than interactions started by a person. The best way is to basically hold out your hand so that they can come and sniff you and work out your smells and what you're about.
- [12:05]
Layla Battison
If you've made it this far, you should have the green light for more pets.
- [12:09]
Dr. Sarah Brown
They love to be petted around the chin and the head and the ears.
- [12:14]
Layla Battison
If the cat is liking the attention, you may be able to tell through its eyes.
- [12:18]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Eye contact is really interesting in cats because they're not programmed to look at each other a lot, and so they don't like staring that might be perceived as hostile. So cats tend to glance a bit more at each other. But there's this wonderful behavior that cats do to people and people can do back to cats, which is called the slow blink. And so if you find yourself gazing at a cat for maybe a little bit long, if you try blinking really slowly or kind of half blinking or squinting at them, they'll quite often do this slow blink back, which is an indication that they're feeling comfortable in your presence. I think it's a lovely thing. It's like a little smile with your eyes.
- [12:59]
Layla Battison
If everything has gone well up to this point, there's a good chance you'll be treated to one of the most wonderful sounds that a cat has in their repertoire, and that's the purr.
- [13:12]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Cats first purr when they're kittens with their mum and their siblings in the lovely, cozy environment of the nest. And I think this is a way of communicating contentedly with your siblings, but also a way of self soothing is sort of a sign that, you know, everything's good and I want it to stay this way. So when they get older and you've got your cat on your lap and it's snuggling away and you're stroking it, they do the same thing. Then they feel content, and so they start to purr. For a long time, they didn't know how cats purred at all. But current science says that purring is controlled by a neural oscillator, or purring center in the brain. And this sends signals to the muscles of the larynx. And these muscles open and close the space between the vocal cords, which creates vibrations at a rate of 25 to about 150 a second. And this results in a sort of continuous purring sound as the cat inhales and exhales. And what's really interesting about purring is that whilst domestic cats can purr and some of the larger wild cats can purr like cheetahs, some of the big cats, lions, for example, roar, but they can't purr. So cats that roar can't purr and vice versa. And they think that this is to do with the structure of the vocal cords. Basically, the big cats have much fleshier vocal cords than those that can purr, so it makes a different noise.
- [14:46]
Layla Battison
If a cat is really relaxed, its purr might be accompanied by the rhythmic motion of tiny paws making biscuits. This behaviour starts as kittens, when kneading on their mother helps to stimulate milk production. And like purring, kneading continues into adulthood. It brings them comfort and also marks their favourite people and places with the scent glands in their feet. Purring might be the ultimate sign of feline contentment. But not every purr is a happy one.
- [15:14]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Cats also purr when they go to the vet, sometimes when they're feeling a bit stressed. And cats have also been known to purr when they're actually dying and in pain. So in that situation, it must be some kind of self soothing. Hark back to kittenhood, where purring brings some sort of comfort.
- [15:31]
Layla Battison
Purring might also be an audible signal to potential enemies. Basically, whether it's happy or suffering, a purring cat is not a threat. But not every sound that a cat makes is meant to communicate something. Some they seem to make out of pure enigmatic instinct.
- [15:50]
Dr. Sarah Brown
So chittering or chattering is what a cat does. Usually when it's watching something out of a window, like a bird that it can't get to, it's a funny noise. It almost sounds like their teeth are chattering. It's like they can't help themselves, it just comes out.
- [16:08]
Layla Battison
What it actually means, however, is a bit of a mystery. It's a sound that seems to be reserved for prey animals that are just out of reach.
- [16:16]
Dr. Sarah Brown
It's most likely frustration, I think, or some people have said, that cats are attempting to attract the attention of the birds outside, or even trying to mimic the birds themselves.
- [16:40]
Layla Battison
The vocal habits of cats can also change throughout their lifetimes.
- [16:44]
Dr. Sarah Brown
They get a sort of cognitive dysfunction type thing as they get older, a bit like people, and they can get quite disorientated, particularly at night.
- [16:52]
Layla Battison
As a result of this feline dementia, an older cat can end up making more noise than ever.
- [17:00]
Dr. Sarah Brown
We had a cat that did that. He was 19 and he would wander the hall at night going, wow.
- [17:06]
Kendra Baker
Wow.
- [17:09]
Dr. Sarah Brown
The best way to help that is to leave some gentle lights on, put the radio on, because quite often they're looking to find you and they can't work out where you've gone.
- [17:18]
Layla Battison
So while cats can sometimes seem aloof and superior, the reality is that they're doing their best to communicate with us. It's not their fault that we're too wrapped up in our own human world to notice.
- [17:30]
Dr. Sarah Brown
We think of everything in terms of how humans experience the world. We're very obsessed with vocalizations and talking all the time. But cats don't. They live in a world of scent. It's all about how something smells. They're coming at everything from a different point of view, and we just have to try and look at it from their point of view.
- [17:48]
Layla Battison
By learning more about that point of view, we can strengthen our relationship with these creatures that we spend years and years of our lives with.
- [17:55]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Every bit you learn about your cat creates a better relationship with them long term.
- [18:05]
Layla Battison
Traditionally, understanding our cats has meant paying close attention to their noises, body language and behavior. But today, modern technology is taking us one step further and giving our pets the tools to start communicating on our level.
- [18:20]
Kendra Baker
Now what?
- [18:23]
Layla Battison
Food in particular? There's one trailblazing feline that has shed light on how cats think and helped to open the door to a more collaborative relationship between humans and pets.
- [18:34]
Kendra Baker
Cuddle?
- [18:36]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Yes, baby.
- [18:38]
Layla Battison
That's coming up after the break.
- [18:44]
Dallas Taylor
Over the years, I've had mixed experiences with wireless providers. Often when I get my bills, there's some unexpected fee or some new restriction to my service. But then I tried Mint Mobile and my experience with them has been totally different. Mint Mobile was super easy to set up, and their customer service team is really friendly. If you have an unlocked phone, you can keep using it and even bring your old phone number with you. I've had Mint Mobile for just over a month now, and everything has worked beautifully. All their plans come with high speed data as well as unlimited talk and text. Plus, new users get three months of premium wireless service for just 15 bucks a month. To get this new customer offer and your new 3 month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com 20k that's mintmobile.com 20,000 cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com 20k $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first 3 month plan only. Speed slower above 40gb on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. Hey listeners, you might have noticed that we did a special double feature today and released two episodes at the exact same time. One about cats and one about dogs. I'm curious if we have more cat people or dog people in our audience, and to find out, I'm going to see which one gets the most shares. So take a moment to think about the people in your life who love cats or dogs and share the episode with them. All you have to do is tap that share button in your podcast player and send it to a friend or family member. If they listen to it, it'll count. I'll announce the winner in two weeks. Now onto the Mystery Sound. Congratulations to Jessica Loyce for getting last episode's mystery sound right.
- [20:33]
Layla Battison
Am I repeating myself? Would you stand me on my head?
- [20:36]
Dallas Taylor
That's the voice of Real Talkin Bubba, a wise cracking teddy bear that was released by Mattel in the mid-90s. Bubba also said things like go on.
- [20:44]
Layla Battison
Wiggle my head and fluff out my hair.
- [20:46]
Dallas Taylor
Bubba was voiced by character actor Gary Grubbs, who's appeared in everything from Dukes of Hazzard to Django Unchained to Glee. Here's Gary playing a sheriff on the X Files.
- [20:55]
Layla Battison
Well, we didn't find any evidence of criminal activity, and since no body turned up, we just went ahead and filed a missing persons report.
- [21:02]
Dallas Taylor
And here's this episode's mystery sound. If you know that sound, submit your guess at the web address mystery.20.org anyone who guesses it right will be entered to win a super soft 20,000Hz T shirt. And if you want to snag a super soft T shirt right now, just head to 20k.org shop let me play you a sound that I really love. That's the sound of my Sonos speakers calibrating. And to me it perfectly represents what I love about Sonos. All you do is open the Sonos app, find the device, and select True Play. Then it calibrates your speakers with these pings as you walk around the room. When it's done, you get this sound, which to me is just so satisfying. The result is that your Sonos speaker is now tuned to the acoustics of the room it's in. This kind of attention to detail is why I have almost 20 Sonos products in my home. For instance, I keep Sonos One speakers in each of my kids bedrooms so they can wind down to relaxing music. The holidays are just around the corner and Sonos speakers make great gifts. They're not just cool pieces of gear, they're a way to make someone's world sound amazing. In my opinion, it doesn't get much better than that. Sonos has great gifts for everyone on your list. Visit sonos.comhertz to wrap up your holiday shopping. That's sonos.com and as always, be sure to use our custom URL to let them know you came from us. Sonos.comhertz.
- [23:01]
E
What if you could hear your favorite song for the first time again? Introducing the all new reimagined Nissan Kicks with an available Bose Personal plus sound system that uses speakers in the head rest to create a 360 degree listening experience. You've never heard anything like this. Reimagine your music and your drive Experience the all new reimagined Nissan Kicks for yourself@nissanusa.com today available feature Bose is a.
- [23:30]
Dallas Taylor
Registered trademark of the Bose Corporation.
- [23:34]
Layla Battison
Cats may not be the most forthcoming communicators, but if we can learn to read their body language and the nuances of their meows will have a much better chance of knowing what they're thinking. But these days there are a few cats making waves for speaking human, leaving us with no room for misunderstanding. And one of those cats is Billy.
- [23:56]
Kendra Baker
Billy was a sweet cat to everyone except for the cats and dogs that she did not like.
- [24:02]
Layla Battison
That's Kendra Baker, Billy's human mum. Kendra's a traveling veterinarian for zoos and wildlife. She and Billy first found each other 16 years ago.
- [24:13]
Kendra Baker
I was in undergrad and was driving home with a friend and a furball ran across the road chasing a rodent of some kind. Unfortunately, the cars on the other side of the road did get into a little bit of a fender bender, but I jumped out of the car and I picked her up and my friend and I drove around trying to find her home. We put up all sorts of signs and no one claimed her, so she just ended up staying with me. I wasn't necessarily in the market for an animal at that point, but I am very glad that the cat distribution system chose me.
- [24:50]
Layla Battison
Billy was about four months old when Kendra brought her home. She grew into A beautiful gray calico with big green eyes.
- [24:57]
Kendra Baker
Billy was always that cat that people who didn't like cats, they changed their mind once they met her. She just had the biggest personality, was always just wanting to be around other people and just had this love for exploring and new things that really spoke.
- [25:18]
Layla Battison
To me from an early age. Billie was a great communicator.
- [25:21]
Kendra Baker
Billy was incredibly verbal, and when it was food time, we would get a frantic kind of running around my ankles, tails upright, whiskers are forward, and a nice long meow, meow.
- [25:35]
Layla Battison
As a veterinarian, Kendra knows the importance of a strong mutual understanding with our pets.
- [25:40]
Kendra Baker
For a lot of us, they are a huge part of our lives, but for the most part, they live in a dictatorship. You know, it's a dictatorship built on love. But we decide when they eat, we decide what they eat, we decide when they go outside. We decide the extra things that they get in their life. Any kind of enrichment, we are responsible for, and that's their entire life. And so I do think that there is a lot that we can do to really improve their quality of life.
- [26:08]
Layla Battison
Kendra was always on the lookout for ways to enrich Billy's life. She started following a few people on social media who were teaching their dogs to use buttons that would play back a word when stepped on.
- [26:20]
Kendra Baker
Play. The buttons in animals are a concept that was taken from human speech pathology. And in humans, it is called alternative and augmentative communication. And it is a way to give nonverbal humans a voice. And the principle is essentially the same. You choose words that are rewarding or reinforcing for your learner, whether it's a dog or a cat.
- [26:45]
Layla Battison
To teach a dog or a cat a new word, you have to model it, just like you would with a baby.
- [26:49]
Kendra Baker
If someone hands you a cup and says cup every single time for three weeks, you're probably going to associate that object with that word cup.
- [27:00]
Layla Battison
At first, Kendra wasn't sure if these buttons would work with Billy.
- [27:04]
Kendra Baker
I didn't know any cats that were doing it. And at that point, the only buttons that were available were the ones that they used in humans. So they're really large learning resources buttons. And when I looked at them, my biggest concern was that Billy wasn't actually going to be heavy enough to depress them.
- [27:18]
Layla Battison
To start out, Kendra went against what everybody online recommended and introduced the food button first.
- [27:26]
Kendra Baker
And the reason that that is not recommended is that frequently they can become fixated on it.
- [27:33]
Layla Battison
But Kendra figured that if Billy did have the strength to push that big button Food would be the best possible motivator.
- [27:40]
Kendra Baker
So that's what we did. And it took her about three and a half weeks of consistent modeling before she pressed the button with intent. Both.
- [27:50]
Layla Battison
After that, Kendra started to introduce more buttons.
- [27:53]
Kendra Baker
Hey, bouncy outside. And then from there, it really increased at a pretty rapid rate. I had no idea just how big it would get.
- [28:03]
Layla Battison
Eventually, Billie's button board grew to over 75 individual words.
- [28:08]
Kendra Baker
Play. Boo. Pet, tummy.
- [28:10]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Back now.
- [28:11]
Kendra Baker
Later. Yes. Love you, bye.
- [28:12]
Layla Battison
Done.
- [28:13]
Kendra Baker
She used them all, some of them significantly more frequently than others. When I started, I was definitely going to tell you that food would be her most pressed button, but actually, it turned out to be a tie between pets and play.
- [28:29]
Layla Battison
The buttons gave Billie more of a voice, helping her to get the attention she wanted in a noisy human world.
- [28:37]
Kendra Baker
The point of them is to give your animals a way to express their desire in a manner that humans pay more attention to. Prior to the buttons, if Billy wanted to play, her choices would have been to, you know, come up to me, maybe move around my legs, potentially bring me a toy. But all of those are kind of soft requests when you are used to verbal communication the way that we are as humans. So when the buttons are involved, it becomes significantly harder for us as humans to ignore a play request. Play. Play.
- [29:15]
Layla Battison
Billy could also express things that otherwise would have been much harder to read. For instance, when Billy's dad went out of town, Billy asked for him repeatedly.
- [29:28]
Kendra Baker
Dad not home. Dad home. Later, Later, a couple more days.
- [29:37]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Watch.
- [29:42]
Layla Battison
Over time, Billy began to speak more English than cat.
- [29:45]
Kendra Baker
She would press up to 200 a day more sometimes, depending on how long I was home for. She did still meow occasionally, but significantly less. And usually it was in situations where she really wanted to play and we were not listening to her. It was more of an exclamation point. Catnip. Catnip outside. Catnip was catnip outside.
- [30:13]
Layla Battison
Not all of Billy's buttons were for tangible objects or simple actions. Some communicated more abstract concepts, like love, favorite or mad.
- [30:23]
Kendra Baker
Mad.
- [30:24]
Layla Battison
So how do you model something like mad to a cat?
- [30:28]
Kendra Baker
Anyone who has had a cat, they know that any mild inconvenience is probably going to be catastrophic for them, right? So for Billy, it was mild inconveniences. So if it was not food time, but she wanted food, then we would model mad. Mad. The other one that I did frequently for Billy was she would love to be on my lap whenever I was sitting down. And if I let her, she would just stay there all day. She would Never move. So, unfortunately, every time that I needed to move her to go to the bathroom or to get up to go to work, I would model the MAD button. Mad. And I only modeled the MAD button three times before she started pressing it on her own. Billy, why are you mad? You to very much so anthropomorphize. It seemed like she had just been waiting for the opportunity to say it to me, and she finally got it, and she was like, oh, thank you. I have been holding this inside forever. Mad. Mad. Why are you mad? Because there's a yoga mat in the middle of the floor. Oh, because you watch. That makes more sense. Later. Later. I know, I know. I know you're mad.
- [31:49]
Layla Battison
Billy got so good at using these buttons that Kendra started posting videos of her online.
- [31:54]
Kendra Baker
You know, I posted one of her very early videos on TikTok. Okay, you can have more pets. You only have to press it once.
- [32:06]
Layla Battison
Okay.
- [32:08]
Kendra Baker
And I woke up in the morning and it had gone viral. The buttons were still incredibly new at this point. And then Billy was the first cat, so I think that kind of kickstarted us. And then once Billy got ahold of the MAD button, it was all over.
- [32:21]
Layla Battison
People just loved the idea of a cat that knew the word mad. The dodo interviewed Kendra for a video called this cat's favorite word is exactly what you'd expect.
- [32:31]
Kendra Baker
My ad is mad by that, why are you mad? That was absolutely her favorite word, and she could not stop pressing it.
- [32:43]
Layla Battison
That video alone has over 25 million views, and today, Billie's social media channels have almost a million total followers.
- [32:51]
Kendra Baker
That's crazy to me. I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that that many people loved watching Billie.
- [32:59]
Layla Battison
Billie became affectionately known as her mad Justee. And this one cat and her owner became an inspiration to thousands.
- [33:07]
Kendra Baker
Most of the comments that I get are, you know, you really have taught me a better way to interact with my cats or improved the communication that I have with my cat currently. And they have expressed that my relationship with Billy helped their relationship with their cats. That's a very humbling experience to read all of those because I had no idea.
- [33:28]
Layla Battison
Eventually, Billy caught the attention of scientists studying how animals think and communicate. Today, there's a collaborative research project being done around pets that use these speech buttons, including Billy.
- [33:39]
Kendra Baker
This is the largest citizen science project that has ever taken place. There are participants in every continent except for Antarctica. There are numerous languages, so it's not just people who speak English who are doing this. The new buttons are actually wifi enabled and so every time they're pressed, that press gets sent into an app, and the lab has access to all of that. So they're really able to get a ton of data.
- [34:11]
Layla Battison
With all that data, scientists hope to figure out once and for all what cats and dogs are capable of understanding and expressing. But even without this research, Kendra still recommends buttons as a way of enhancing your relationship with your cat.
- [34:27]
Kendra Baker
For them, it is really just enrichment for their life. It is a way for them to have a little bit more control over their day to day.
- [34:33]
Layla Battison
And of course, it's rewarding for the owners, too.
- [34:38]
Kendra Baker
Every interaction with her was just a delight. Every time that she pressed the mad button, every time that she did anything with her buttons, it just gave me so much joy.
- [34:48]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Love you.
- [34:49]
Kendra Baker
I love you too. You want some pets?
- [34:51]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Pets?
- [34:52]
Kendra Baker
Yes. Yeah?
- [34:54]
Dr. Sarah Brown
Okay.
- [34:57]
Kendra Baker
Good girl. Love you. Love you. Okay, I love you too. I'm glad I'm home. Also, we learn a lot in veterinary school about your domestic animal behavior. But I think that living this experience with Billy probably did more for me for feline behavior than any of my classes ever did. And it really makes you reevaluate the way that we interact with our pets.
- [35:28]
Layla Battison
As Billie got older, she started to need more of Kendra's professional veterinary help.
- [35:33]
Kendra Baker
So Billy was born with a condition called polycystic kidney disease. And what that means is that from birth, her kidneys started throwing cysts out so little pockets of fluid. And initially there isn't necessarily any abnormal signs that you see with that, but it does predispose cats and humans to kidney failure.
- [35:59]
Layla Battison
When Billie was 12, her health took a turn for the worse, and she underwent a series of operations to keep her kidneys working.
- [36:06]
Kendra Baker
In cats, we grade kidney failure in four different stages. One is the lowest and four is the highest. And she had been managed at two prior to that last surgery. And then afterwards, she was steadily in the three phase. But unfortunately, earlier this year, in February, I did find that her blood values had increased again and she had jumped into stage four.
- [36:29]
Layla Battison
At that point, Kendra's options were pretty limited.
- [36:32]
Kendra Baker
There is no cure. There's not really a way to turn back time. You can really only manage the symptoms once it gets to a certain point.
- [36:41]
Layla Battison
From then on, Kendra's priority became making sure that Billy had the best possible quality of life. To help with this, she used Billy's ouch button. Ouch. As well as a new one medicine.
- [36:53]
Kendra Baker
Having to give your cat a pill is a lot for you, but it's also a lot for them. If you can imagine that the Roles were reversed. If you had the flu and someone jumped on you once a day and shoved something in your mouth, I'll think that we would really associate anything good with that.
- [37:09]
Layla Battison
So instead of forcing pills down her throat or hiding them in food, Kendra used the medicine button to help Billy understand.
- [37:17]
Kendra Baker
I made sure that she saw what I was doing with the pill. And then using my words, I would say, medicine, help. Ouch. Buy. And I would say, medicine, then food. And within 36 hours, she started taking it voluntarily. And I have a number of these videos of. It's so cute to watch them because you can tell that she hates it. You know, she'd pick up the pill, and then she'd kind of. And then she'd drop it, and then she'd pick it up, and then she'd drop it, and then she'd finally, like, swallow it. But it took a really long time. It was fascinating to watch how just 36 hours of me changing my behavior led to this improvement in our ability to make sure that she was well managed.
- [37:59]
Layla Battison
Slowly but surely, Billie started using her buttons less and less.
- [38:04]
Kendra Baker
When I stopped to think about it, it really made sense. You know, if you're not feeling well, the last thing that you want to do is have a conversation with anyone. Right? It just takes a lot more energy.
- [38:13]
Layla Battison
Eventually, Billie wasn't eating much. Then she stopped wanting to go outside.
- [38:18]
Kendra Baker
I'm thankful because she declined pretty rapidly there at the end. We had a couple of good days, but then when I got home, she was just under the bed and not really responding to me and wouldn't get up. So that was kind of a cue of, okay, we're. We're definitely not coming back from this one. So I made the decision for her to have an end that did not last days. So the decision of watching her slowly waste away versus allowing her to pass peacefully, I absolutely chose the latter. It's definitely the one that I would choose again and again rather than watching my best friend fade.
- [39:07]
Layla Battison
I spoke to Kendra just a couple of weeks after Billy had passed.
- [39:11]
Kendra Baker
It is definitely raw. It's definitely an adjustment that I have not really thoroughly internalized yet. It's weird when there's a presence in your Life for almost 16 years to just not have them there anymore.
- [39:37]
Layla Battison
Whether it's using tools like Billy's buttons or just taking the time to get to know our cat's sounds and body language, both pets and owners stand to gain so much.
- [39:47]
Kendra Baker
I think that Billy really helped me to become just a more compassionate person in general, a more empathetic person. I found myself putting myself in her shoes. And what that did is it made me look outside of myself in every aspect of my life. And I think that she probably improved my ability to be a kind human, not just for, you know, other animals, but other people as well. It becomes a lot easier to look at someone who is not like you and really feel empathy for that situation. I think she's just made me a better person. Love you. You too. Love Mom. I love you too, baby.
- [40:43]
Layla Battison
Yes, yes, yes.
- [40:45]
Kendra Baker
I love you.
- [40:50]
Dallas Taylor
20,000 Hz is produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Hear more@defactosound.com this episode was written and.
- [40:58]
Layla Battison
Produced by Leila Battison and Casey Emmerling.
- [41:02]
Kendra Baker
With help from Grace East.
- [41:03]
Dallas Taylor
It was sound designed and mixed by Graham Gold and Justin Hollis. Thanks to our guests Sarah Brown and Kendra Baker. For more tips on how to better understand your cat, be sure to pick up Sarah's book, the Hidden Language of Cats. You can find Billy's videos on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok under the username BillySpeaks. And if you want to learn about the buttons that Billy used, Kendra has lots of info@billyspeaks.com I'm Dallas Taylor. Thanks for listening. It.