I am awakened every morning by a plaintive, "Helloooooo?" It sounds just like a little child or a tiny old person from a remote village, desperately asking if someone is still alive in the house. Well, that's what it conjures up in my groggy mind. In Eli (the designated waker of human) cat speak it means, "Get up and feed us, you lazy old woman!"
Throughout my day, a variety of animals try to communicate with me. From the squirrels out front that come running and chirping when they hear the garage door opening, because they know I keep a stash of peanuts for them, to Jack's wet nose-in-the-face alarm clock. I swear I heard Chance calling, "Mommy?" the other day. I made the mistake of telling my husband this and I think his pregnant pause before declaring, "You're a crazy cat person!" was while he was debating whether or not to Baker Act me.
Fancy is my real talker. He chats and chirps at me all day. I have never heard so many different sounds come from one tiny body as the repertoire he possesses. When he wants to go out on to the porch and the cat door is locked, he whines one long note like a kid begging for one more piece of candy. When he wants more food, he "merps" at me until we begin the guessing game. I ask, "Do you want something?" His reply, "MEH!" Then I go down the list - food, chicken treat, bacon, etc. With each question, he answers with either a sound similar to "no" or "maybe" until I get the correct question then I know by his sounds and body language I have hit pay dirt. I know when he's scared, bored, angry, playful and just about every other emotion this tiny creature could experience. When you consider that Fancy started out life as a feral/castaway, for him to have bonded with a human in this way is pretty amazing.
I still crack up when I think back to when we had three French Bulldogs, a mom and her two daughters. The girls were very competitive. One day I had to give one medication, so I put peanut butter on a cracker to disguise the pill. When I went to give the other one a plain cracker, she stopped, sniffed the cracker, turned and smelled her sister's breath, then looked at me with an accusing glare as much to say, "Hey! Why did she get peanut butter and not me?!" I also learned from them that dogs can definitely count!
Because dogs have been domesticated longer, and people have literally bred them to be our slaves, it isn't unusual for them to understand human language. Ironically, they possess the ability to understand us, but we are, for the most part, clueless when it comes to understanding their language. There are people who claim to be animal communicators, but that's really for our benefit. How are we to prove what they're saying is really what the animal is trying to communicate?? Can you imagine a dog or a cat thinking, "Wait a minute! I didn't say that at all! I DO NOT want to be neutered just to save the sorry planet!!" I strongly suspect that well-meaning communicators are really trying to help their clients cope with loss and the every day frustrations we deal with in trying to live with another species.
I learned a lot about communication with a horse in my life a few years ago. I intentionally did not say, "A horse I owned," because I have a problem with the idea of owning a life. In my opinion, we live with them for as long as we are blessed to do so. Anyway, Poco was a mare who came to live with friends who rescued eleven Premarin mares that had been culled from their brood mare facility. Premarin is the hormone women are prescribed to alleviate menopausal symptoms. It is literally PREgnant MARe urINe. Let me repeat that. Pregnant mare urine. To collect this urine, brood mares are hooked up to catheters, kept in a confined area, and unable to lie down or turn around. As soon as the baby is born, it is removed from the mare and the mare is impregnated again. If you doubt this, Google it.
I will write more about Poco later, but for this post, I want to describe two incidences where she communicated to me exactly what she was thinking. The most poignant was when her foal was removed from her. Poco was being kept in a different place than the rest of the herd because of health concerns. (Premarin mares generally have a lot of health issues.) The baby had been weaned and it was time for her to join the rest of the herd. When they came for her baby, Poco knew from the sight of the trailer what was going to happen. She looked at me with terror in her eyes and literally screamed at me - begging me to do something. I was helpless. All I could do was stay with her and cry right along with her. Another time, a sick calf was being cared for in the stall next to Poco's. Unfortunately, the calf didn't survive. When I got to the barn that morning, Poco was standing in her stall looking through the bars at the dead calf. When she realized I was there, she slowly turned her head to me with the saddest expression in her eyes. I told her that I knew the calf was gone and, yes, it was very sad. We cried together, yet again.
I wish people would try to understand what their animal companions are trying to tell them. If we just stopped and realized they are emotional beings that love us and want to please us, maybe there wouldn't be so many abandoned animals. Sometimes they're confused by what we're asking of them. They could be scared, bored, lonely, ill - any number of things that are causing them to act out or not follow our "rules." Humans are so used to feeling superior, especially to other creatures, we forget that we are just an opposable thumb away from their reality. Something to think about...
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