"My human, you look miserable, I have never seen you hunt, here cook yourself this delicious Mus musculus molossinus I got from the rear of fine Japanese restaurant"
I need an app that can tell me when my cat has had enough pettings to alert me before he flips over and latches on to my arm and kicks layers of my skin off.
Disclaimer: I'm no Jackson Galaxy. But pets, both cats and dogs, communicate with their owners in their own way.
Cats are a lot about body language.
For your question I just look at the ears and the tail. When the ears go lower and/or tail starts wagging, I stop. Or when my cat moves a small distance away, sits there and stares/smiles? I stop.
I've noticed that what I interpret as a desire for petting is often some other business. Maybe the litterbox is full. Or maybe it's playtime (thinks the cat). Or something else is amiss.
It maybe sounds stupid but when I can't read my cat, I usually just ask. I say repeatedly "show me", "where", "show me", "where" etc. and slowly walk behind my cat and let it lead.
For example, if the balcony door is open and cold air is coming in (my cat doesn't like cold), my cat sometimes takes me to first to the fridge and then leads me to the balcony door. When the litterbox is full my cat takes me near it and sits there facing it, within visual/smelling range, but never very close to it. And so on, one has to connect the dots from the context, and ask the question "what is there at this location that is meaningful to the cat".
Of course sometimes I can't fix what my cat wants. Like when the Sun has moved away and the sleeping place in the chair has fallen under a shadow. So my cat tries a few times, repeating the same behaviour, but eventually gives up, either gets bored or realizes I can't or won't help.
I also follow my cat while asking questions! It's almost always food, water, catnip or litter.
Regarding the water: he won't drink chlorinated water. In his previous home, he developed urinary stones because they didn't figure this out. Cue a BS prescription diet sold by "vets". Nope, he just needed fresh, non-chlorinated water.
>For example, if the balcony door is open and cold air is coming in (my cat doesn't like cold), my cat sometimes takes me to first to the fridge and then leads me to the balcony door
That is an extraordinary level of symbolic communication for a cat!
I was pretty successful with using the rule of three. You pet a cat three times. No less, no more. Cat won't be irritated by prolonged petting, but also not fully satisfied with only three pets. My cat never scratched me when I used this rule.
There's also: Let me outside and let me inside. My mistake was putting the food bowl beside the back door so I have to guess which one it is, food or out.
Well, with my cat in the childhood the translation was easy. Two meows (probably learned from "mama" = mom) meant that the cat wants attention from my mother. A single long meow meant that the cat wants to walk outside (well, this was specifically trained by meowing at the cat at appropriate times). A short meow meant either food or play, depending on the room where the cat is in.
I'm not the parent commentator but I understood them to do it before they let the cat out.
I'm pretty sure that's pretty normal for training behavior, until you step up the training and stop letting the cat out unless it meows correctly
I have a cat, but am a dog person. The difference in intelligence is stinking. The cat can't communicate anything past meowing generically, whereas the dog can understand what I'm saying and bark on the one it wants.
When my cat wants something, she'll meow uselessly until we chance on what it is. When my dog wants something, she'll come to me and touch me with her paw, and I'll say "Food. Water. Walk." and she'll bark at the one she wants. It's amazing.
I don't doubt that dogs are smarter than cats, but dogs are far more social and are motivated to learn by that social connection. Cats can also be trained, but it's a lot more work to keep them motivated.
Cats do communicate a lot, but it's physical and sometimes subtle; eye contact, body rubbing, head butting, contextual waiting, and so on. Our cats very rarely meow unless they haven't been noticed, or, with the Norwegian, when she wants attention and she has a toy in her mouth she wants to play with - she loves playing fetch with toy mice.
While cats mostly do just meow (as much as you can say a dog mostly just barks)... my cats definitely do have variances to their meow depending on their needs or wants.
When we stayed in an RV while the house was being built, I had to put my fat boy Percy into the shower stall with the doors closed while the dogs ate otherwise he would annoy them (with headbutts) into not wanting to eat. He developed a habit of going into the stall on his own and meowing when he wanted to be fed because we always put him into the shower when food would appear for the dogs.
Even in the new house, he jumps into the tub and meows the same way when he wants to be fed.
He meows a different way when he sits at the gate or at the top of the stairs, as if for permission to interact. If you don't acknowledge him, he won't hop the babygate or come down the stairs. If you do respond, he trills a happy chirp and trots along.
He developed a whine meow where he basically is saying "I need attention now." Most recently he did it because a towel fell into his water bowl and he couldn't drink out of it.
That counts as 'food, water, walk' to me.
Oskar also has various different behaviors associated with meow types for things that get him the response that he wants. But both cats are Sphynxes and they are unusually talky... I doubt I would have gotten as much from other breeds. But they do clearly communicate what they want from you once they find a way to get that to come across.
Cat IQ depends on the cat. We had an incredibly stupid cat who liked nice but was dumb as a rock, and would mostly sit in the kitchen staring at the far wall and looking a bit dreamy. She didn't really meow at all. Or do much of anything else.
We had a couple of high IQ cats who not only knew how to communicate they were also super-social, and made it very clear to us and to visitors what they did/didn't want.
Now we have a mid-IQ cat who is quite vocal and quite good at communicating, but we have to make more of an effort than with the previous two.
If the cat wants a scritch-scratch, she'll bat me with her paw.
The eagles and coyotes (I live in the middle of the city, go figure) would make short work of the cat if outside. The coyotes often hang out on the front lawn, and recently left a nice "you suck, Walter" message as a pile of poo by the front door. Had a bobcat wander by not too long ago. The coyotes don't approach me, but I'm not so sure about bobcats.
A couple weeks ago a gigantic eagle cruised by me at eye level, about 10 feet away. No way I'm going to tangle with that monster, and it's easily big enough to cart off the cat. The other cats in the neighborhood are indoor cats, too.
Once there was a juvenile coyote cut in half in the front yard. I figured it was that eagle.
Another time a ginormous owl decided to sit on the porch railing, staring at me, for quite a while. Yeah, it could easily have taken the cat apart.
