The Language of Cats

[SoDesuKa]

Otis comes in from the kitchen with a tone that's half greeting, half inquiry. He jumps from the side table to the desk, appraises the situation, then makes a remark the the effect of Well, good. Everything is as expected. I've gotten so used to his routine that I was surprised when I realized how much a cat can communicate with rising and falling inflections.

Then it occurred to me. Do cats have the same language all over the world? In other words, do Chinese cats speak a sort of Chinese? After all, that's a tonal language, too. Maybe cats in Beijing express themselves with completely different inflections ... those that make sense in China.

Anybody know? Have you traveled to distant lands and made the acquaintance of a local cat? I once met a male cat in Cairo, but I can't say whether there was anything uniquely Egyptian about him. Japanese cats are taken for walks on a leash. That would never happen here.