Yowls, cries and pings

IT’S DINNER time, and after I’ve fed the animals, I begin to prepare my own dinner. For a tuna salad, I take out a tin of tuna, flip the top open, and suddenly, I’m surrounded by cats and one dog, all smiling at me.

In my household, everyone loves tuna, but no one gets it except me. Even if you use tuna packed in spring water, even if you rinse the tuna off, it still has lots of salt in it, enough to damage the kidneys of any cat or dog. Just check the label. Yes, there’s salt in the fish.

You know, I open lots of other tins, including cat food, but only the “ping” of a flipped top of tuna attracts the animals in my household.

How can the dog and the cats tell the difference between one ping and another? To my ears, the pings sound the same.

It’s true both dogs and cats can detect an extremely broad range of frequencies, many of which are beyond what humans can hear.

Cats also have those wonderfully expressive ears, which act as “funnels” of sound, bringing the sounds to their brain. Some dog breeds have this ear shape too, but my poodle Wan-Wan doesn’t. Her floppy ears probably mask a great deal of sounds that the cats can hear, but she nevertheless has very acute hearing, well, acute compared to mine.

Every morning and evening all the doggies in the neighbourhood hold a conversation. Even before I’m aware that the dogs have started barking, Wan is at the gate responding.

“Hello! How are you?” I think she’s saying. “Anything happening in or around your house?”

How can the dogs hear each other clearly? Yet they can. Each one knows which other dog is speaking. At least, it looks that way.

The cats are completely silent, not being particularly interested in what a dog has to say. Let a cat announce his or her presence outside, though, and my cat-herd responds with high-pitched crying.

If the noise is coming from a cat they know, one of the soi boys who use my house as a hotel, for instance, they become nervous in another way. When Thep or Thong yells in fear or anger, my cats recognise his voice and look at me as if I should be helping the cat in need. Their own cries are much lower, not so strident,

Wan also recognises different cat voices, and if my cats are commanding me to do something, she wants to command me too.

I suppose they’re all cute, but it can be annoying.

Down the soi lives a couple with their baby (yes, a human baby), who’s been going through his own screaming phase. Finally, the parents discovered that taking him for a walk would gradually calm him down.

They just started these walks a few days ago, and my household has been going crazy. Somehow, the baby’s screams must seem to them like a cat’s. The kid screams, my cats meow, my dog barks.

“Please!” I think Wan tells me. “Save the cat!”

“It’s not a cat; it’s a baby,” I tell her.

“No. No. It’s a baby,” she answers, whimpering nervously until the kid calms down.

Well, my animals know the difference between pings of tuna and cat food tins. Possibly, they also know the difference between a crying cat and a crying baby. They can also hear all that distress in his voice. A baby is a baby, even it’s not a kitten or a puppy, and they just want to help.