The WordPress/JetPack writing prompt for today is:
If your pet could talk, what would be the first thing it says?

The person who wrote this prompt obviously never had pets. “If pets could talk?” They talk all the time. Are you listening?

When I was a teacher, I’d often apply Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to my thinking of the class dynamics, and individual behaviours.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Now, I’ve taught in two extreme environments: A secondary school in a poor country, where the school supplies housing and food for all the students, not because it’s posh, but because addressing the students physiological needs (the lowest level on the hierarchy) is the only way these kids will get any opportunity to learn. And at British Council, one of the premier ESL centres, where tuition is high enough that any child attending is already operating in the third level (Loving and Belonging) or higher. They aren’t worried about food or personal security.

In both environments, my job as a teacher isn’t just to teach the syllabus, it’s to try to propel students up the hierarchy. I can create that sense of belonging. I can help build self-esteem (mostly by treating my students with respect, no matter their age or comparative ability within the class). Of course, I could also do a poor job, and push students down the hierarchy.

So what does this have to do with pets? Everything. They have needs, and they know that they’re at your mercy. So when they communicate, they are often expressing a need or a desire. Your job is to think like then and fulfill that need as best you can.

My examples will be based on cats, as we rescue cats and thus interact with them a lot. I’ll be using ‘it’ instead of he/she just for convenience, I know the genders of my cats, and yes, gender plays a roll in needs, even for a cat that’s been neutered.

As we added more cats to our house, we noticed that some of the original cats got more bouts of anxiety. We quickly figured out that it was a food scarcity fear (Physiological needs), so we put out more bowls of dry food around the house (They get wet food from us on a schedule, dry as they need). Initially there was binging, as older cats still feared that newcomers would eat it all. Eventually they realized that we always refilled, and there was no need to overeat.

We still have challenges to their psychological needs. For example, this is independence day in Malaysia. There are fireworks going off everywhere, prompting a lot of fear and anxiety (Safety needs) among the cats. Some react by hiding, some react by seeking a human to comfort them. And I do love that display of trust, when they feel unsafe and seek you out. One of the feral cats we were trying to tame and foster was outside in a nieghbour’s yard while I was hanging laundry. A troupe of monkeys came through, and this cat ran to me, standing behind my legs, watching the monkeys go by.

As I’m writing this, Tasha, by far our eldest at 19, keeps calling me, because she likes to sit beside me when I type, but a younger cat has taken her spot. Rather than fight over it, Tasha expects me to resolve this in her favour. She’s demanding respect and status, which would be Esteem, second from the top.

Given that cats don’t naturally meow to each other – it’s a form of communication that they try expressly with humans, but sometimes transpose to other cats (Ezra meows at other cats all the time, they don’t seem to get it) – each cat experiments with their calls and tries to figure out what works. Daniel knows that if he really wants my attention, he needs to call to me from the bathroom. That makes me get up from the keyboard and come to him. He’ll do this when he wants touches or food. His later actions will determine which he wants.

Obviously the simplest communication for a cat is to stand beside the thing it wants and make noise until the human reacts. When they want a door opened, most cats sit beside it and meow. Not Daniel. He thumps the door. It gets a quicker response. Now two of the other cats have learned this communication trick.

And cats can express empathy, which may be tier 3 or tier 5 of the chart, depending on your interpretation. This very week, I’m fighting a virus and my voice is not normal. Tasha, who’s seen me through heart surgery, is like “suck it up, wimp.” Ezra, Nikki, and Daniel, the next senior-most cats, are all keeping close watch over me. Eva, who is particularly insecure, is worried something might happen to me and has become a constant companion, with her questioning meows and constant need of reassurances. Some of the newer cats are assessing me change of voice as a threat and are continually avoiding contact.

Our cats also understand bits of our language. There are the obvious emotional prompts; No, good, bad, etc. But there are also more specific prompts. Our cats are each assigned a bedroom to go to when we need to control them. We use one word, “upstairs” with the cat’s name to let it know that we need it to go to its home base. We literally ‘herd cats’ to the upstairs landing, where they separate into their rooms. They also know that once in their rooms, that when they hear us calling names long and slow that it means they’re being let out.

Nikki and Ezra are twins. Once, she came to me, meowing distraughtly, so I tried some words to see what she wanted. “Food?” got a dismissive meow. As did “Play?” Then I said “Ezra?” And she gave a seven-syllable meow that was so plaintive. She followed me around until I located him on top of a wardrobe. She joined him up there, and years later, this is still the place they go to snuggle. They’re up there as I type this.

Daniel, who has no actual blood relatives in our pride*, has shown repeatedly that he knows our names for the other cats. Just yesterday I could not find Nikki. I figured she was evading me. So I asked Daniel, “Where’s Nikki?” He gave me this puzzled look as if to say “you can’t see her?” then stared behind me. Yep, there she was, evading me by following a few feet behind.

Do our pets talk to us? All the time. Do they listen to us? Depends on their mood.

Here watch a 17-year-old ad I love, “Cat Herders”

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*If you want to see our cats, they have their own Instagram account, parks_pride, but I haven’t been updating it recently.