Licking, more like wiping my lips... what does it mean. Educating humans.

We wipe our lips carefully when we are eating or when we have finished eating. Our tongue comes out and travels round the edge of the mouth.

This is a functional movement of the tongue rather than an expressive signal. We do this so as not to waste food. The tongue curls so that any food fragments are carefully put back in the mouth to be eaten.

So what does this signal to our dumb friends, the humans? It means either that I like the food and want to make sure I get it all, down to the last crumb or smear. Or it means I was so hungry I didn't want to waste any, even of food that I was less keen on.

If humans look carefully at us, the fact that there is food being eating should make them able to distinguish between this kind of lip wiping and the swifter tongue flick, which expresses stress.

This video is also on Celia's Youtube channel in the playlist of cat signals - what is my cat saying?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxC12BbRB54&list=PLnwXtI1uuo884ABEOTorPYZNnIeTh04pV&index=26 

 

Educating humans ... the silent purr

 

Here is my friend Freya doing an almost silent purr. So different from the loud purr by Tilly which you will find on my Youtube cat signals playlist. I couldn't video a silent purr because listeners or viewers would simply assume that I had turned the sound off.

Some of us purr very very loudly. Some purr moderately. And some purr so silently that our dumb humans cannot hear us and think that we don't purr at all.

If they looked more closely they would see the slight movements in the chest. Some humans put their ear close to our bodies to see if they can feel the vibrations. They usually can.

Luckily I purr moderately. I feel that the loud purrers are giving their humans too much feed back. 

If I was unlucky enough to be a silent purrer my human would never know I was doing it. Because if she put her ear close to my body I would simply swipe at it...

You have to stop them taking liberties.

 

A new top cat ... in Canada

Join me, fellow cats, in welcoming the latest world top cat.... Nico Carney of Canada. Yes, he is Purr Minster, the owner of Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney.

If you take a look at his Twitter feed you will see that he has been recently consulting Larry, Britain's top cat in number 10 Downing St. Apparently they talked about tariffs.

I can reveal the real truth of those conversations... not about tariffs at all but about the stresses and strains of managing prime ministers. Larry had good advice for Nico.

Why? Because Larry has outlasted some of the worse prime ministers  Britain has ever had. The roll call is David Cameron (who dissed him for not catching mice), Teresa May, Boris Johnson (who imported an incontinent dog to no 10), Liz Truss (whose term was shorter than a lettuce), Rishi Sunak (who didn't have a chance after the last two) and now Starmer.

No wonder Larry is looking rather old and tired after that.

But we wish Nico well. It's tough at the top. Don't let Carney get away with anything.

And, purrlease, if you meet JD Vance who dislikes women with cats, bite him for me. You can leave Trump alone - at least he is a carnivore.

Why I arch my back... educating humans in our body language

 I arch my back, either when I am just stretching, or when I am trying to show how big I am -  hoping to intimidate an enemy. Turning sideways and arching the back makes me look more formidable. 

Here is a video to educate dumb humans in our body language. 

Tommy, a juvenile cat reacted to by fighting rather than fleeing. So he arched his back to show he was bigger and turned sideways to show that there was even more of him. He also growled which you can hear. All this was to intimate an enemy.

He was frightened of course. Which is why when he was trying to move away, he went slowly, cautiously, with the rest of his body lowered. His tail was lowered too! 

So his body language shows both fear and aggression.

 

• The playlist of what cats are saying is on my Youtube channel under Celia's name is https://www.youtube.com/@CeliaHaddoncats/playlists