The former has a thin, high voice with much
smaller vocabulary. As a rule, the gelded cat does not "mew" to make
known his wants, but employs his voice for conversational purposes. A
mother cat "talks" much more than any other, and more when she has small
kittens than at other times.
Cat language has been reduced to etymology in several tongues. In Arabia
their speech is called naoua; in Chinese, ming; in Greek, larungizein;
in Sanscrit, madj, vid, bid; in German, miauen; in French miauler; and
in English, mew or "miaouw."
Perhaps, if Professor Garner had turned his attention to cat language
instead of monkeys we would know more about it. But a French professor,
Alphonse Leon Grimaldi, of Paris, claims that cats can talk as readily
as human beings, and that he has learned their language so as to be able
to converse with them to some extent. Grimaldi goes even further: he not
only says that he knows such a language, but he states definitely that
there are about six hundred words in it, that it is more like modern
Chinese than anything else, and to prove this contention, gives a small
vocabulary.
Most of us would prefer to accept St. George Mivart's conclusions, that
the difference between all animals and human beings is that while they
have some means of communication, or language, we only have the gift of
speech. Among the eighteen distinct active powers which he attributes to
the cat, he quotes: "16th, powers of pleasurable or painful excitement
on the occurrence of sense-perceptions with imaginations,
_emotions_;" and "17th, a power of expressing feelings by sounds or
gestures which may affect other individuals,--_emotional
language_.
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