After being owned by cats for more than 25 years, we thought we had heard just about every kind of meow there was. Then Annie came along and reminded us that cats are always capable of surprising us.
When Annie first joined our family, we quickly noticed that she had several different ways of meowing. One of them was especially unusual. The best way I can describe it is “Meow-WOW,” but what made it even more interesting was the way she could be standing right beside you and somehow make it sound like she was behind a closed door. It was adorable, and neither of us had ever heard a cat make a sound quite like it before. We started to think of it as one of those little vocal quirks that was uniquely Annie. At least, that’s what we thought.
Then Friday Started Doing It
One day, we heard Annie’s unmistakable “Meow-WOW” somewhere in the house and went looking for her. When we followed the sound, though, we discovered that it wasn’t Annie at all. It was Friday. Our oldest girl had just made Annie’s meow almost perfectly. We stood there completely confused because, after decades of living with cats, neither of us could remember ever hearing one of our cats seemingly copy another cat’s distinctive meow. Since then, it has happened from time to time between the two girls, enough that we started wondering whether Friday really was mimicking Annie. That alone was interesting. Then Annie took things to an entirely different level…
Annie Apparently Had a Plan
Our boy Zorro has a room that Annie is not allowed to go into. As you can probably imagine, that makes the room approximately 1,000 times more interesting to her. The room happens to be right beside my office, and Zorro sometimes spends time in there with the door closed. When he is ready to come out, he has a very recognizable meow that I have learned means, “Okay, I’m done in here. Open the door.” One day while I was sitting in my office, I heard that exact meow. Without thinking twice, I got up, walked over and opened Zorro’s door. Normally he would be standing right there waiting to come out, but this time the room was completely empty. Zorro wasn’t even in there. Before I could figure out what was happening, Annie came flying past me like lightning and ran straight into Zorro’s room. I had been completely fooled. She had made a meow that sounded enough like Zorro that I responded exactly the way I always respond to him. I opened the door, and she immediately took advantage of the opportunity. A few days later, she did something similar with one of Jack’s recognizable meows to get our attention. At that point, we really started wondering whether cats can intentionally mimic the sounds of other cats they live with.
Can Cats Actually Mimic Other Cats’ Meows?
There doesn’t seem to be much scientific research specifically examining whether domestic cats intentionally imitate the individual meows of other cats. So while Annie’s behavior certainly looked like mimicry to us, we can’t say that science has proven she was deliberately impersonating Zorro. What researchers have discovered about feline vocalizations, however, makes the whole thing even more fascinating. Domestic cats appear to have a surprisingly flexible vocal system. A 2025 study comparing domestic cats with several wild felid species found that domestic cat meows showed greater acoustic variability, which researchers described as increased vocal plasticity associated with domestication. In simpler terms, cats don’t necessarily have one fixed, unchanging meow. They seem capable of producing a wide variety of sounds, and those sounds can change depending on the situation.
Cats Change Their Meows Depending on the Situation
If you live with a talkative cat, you probably know that not all meows mean the same thing. The sound your cat makes while greeting you may be completely different from the one they use when they want food, attention or access to a closed room. Research supports this observation. Studies have found measurable differences in feline meows depending on context, including changes in pitch, duration and intonation. That means your cat’s “feed me” meow may be acoustically different from their “where are you?” meow or their “open this door” meow. And then there’s the very specific “THERE IS A BUG ON THE CEILING AND EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT IT” sound. Cats clearly have a much larger vocal toolbox than we sometimes give them credit for, and vocalizations are only one part of the many ways cats communicate with each other.
Cats Also Recognize Familiar Voices
Cats are not only good at producing different vocalizations. Research suggests they are also quite good at recognizing familiar voices and sounds. Research has shown that kittens can distinguish their own mother’s calls from those of unfamiliar mother cats, while other studies show that adult cats recognize and respond differently to familiar human voices. That matters when we think about what Annie did. She has heard Zorro’s meow countless times. She has also watched us respond to that meow by opening his door. If she is able to recognize his vocalization and understand the response that usually follows, it isn’t unreasonable to wonder whether she may have learned that reproducing a similar sound could get the same result. Science simply hasn’t tested that exact question yet.
Cats Are Always Learning From Us
One of the things we love most about cats is how observant they are. They learn our routines, our habits and our responses, often without us realizing just how much information they are collecting. Our kitties know what time we normally wake up, which cabinet holds the treats, what the sound of the food container means and which behavior is most likely to get us off the couch. Cats may also learn which sounds get the fastest response. Feline communication is still an area where there is a lot left to learn, especially compared with the enormous amount of research that has been done on dogs. We don’t yet know exactly how much cats may learn vocally from the other cats around them or whether they intentionally reproduce those sounds. But our experience with Annie has certainly made us curious. While researchers are still figuring out how flexible feline communication really is, Annie may already be conducting experiments of her own. And apparently, I am the test subject. 😹
Have you ever heard one of your cats mimic another cat’s meow? If you have, we would LOVE to hear what happened.
