Garfield Minus Garfield

Also makes me wonder if people talk to their cats...

I 100% talk to mine!

Not only do I really l talk to my cats, but they talk to me too! We're about equal in our abilities to understand each other; sometimes one of my cats might just run around for a bit yell-meowing and it's not clear why, but I'm sure they feel the same way when I occasionally get upset at things. Other times, like when one of them starts whine-meowing when I'm putting their wet food into a bowl, I know _exactly_ what's she's saying even if it doesn't actually cause me to get it done any faster.

Quiet... Chilling... Quiet... I make certain noises as I retrieve the wet food container Meeoooooooooowwwww! races ahead to where the dish is

Wait, is there anyone who doesn't talk to cats? I had no idea.

Frankly, people not talking to their cat(s) should be registered as certified sociopath

IME while clear two-way communication might be impossible [1], talking to your pet, cat or dog or any other mammal [2] does deepen the mutual bond and provides some communication framework - not saying that your cat will definitely understand what does it mean when you say "Garfield, fetch me that yellow slipper", let alone actually obey, but it will, over time, learn to recognize tone, sounds, and even context, and will also try to vocalize back, which may turn into patterns you start to recognize. So yes, it pays to talk directly to your pet.

Though that's not as strange as talking to your plants that seems to help the plants somehow.

[1] let's call it super rare because one in a trillion trillion is still not zero

[2] smarter birds too, can't say much about reptiles beyond a pond turtle really bonded with my brother

Not only that, but the meows get more frantic as I'm walking towards the spot where the dish goes. She needs to be absolutely certain that there's no chance I'll change my mind two steps before getting there!

There are a million cat & dog owners out there using Talking Buttons, borrowed from nonverbal human assistive communications. Mostly to make funny Tiktok videos, to be fair. It's rarely clear what is random, what is Clever Hans training, and what is direct operant conditioning.

yes to all of this. i actually think my cat thinks i am dumb, because she often mimes out the thing that she wants me to do in increasingly unsubtle ways as she gets more and more frustrated as i don't get it-- like she is playing charades and i'm the useless teammate that isn't getting it (which i find absolutely hilarious every time, even if it is often something that is objectively annoying were i to forget that she is a cat and not a human). she also has an astonishing "vocabulary" of very different meow... tambres?... that it is very hard for me to think don't have _some_ purpose-- if they didn't, why wouldn't she just make the same or similar noises every time?