A netizen’s cat tolerated an astonishing 176 pets from his human!
An Instagrammer decided to test the limits of his feline overlords’ tolerance for pets, and it was instructional.
Porky, who looks like he’s a British shorthair, lasted 107 repetitions of his human’s hand rubbing his head before he’d had enough. His brother, Jim, lasted 176 repetitions!
Both are extraordinarily polite. Porky just got up and left when his human kept going despite clear signs that he was at his limit, like a swishing tail and shifting positions. Jim was still enjoying having his head stroked after the 100 pets mark.
First, Bud doesn’t like that kind of palm-open head petting. I’ve gotta be gentle and very precise, being careful not to touch his ears, which clearly annoys him. The limit is maybe…four? Five?
He likes it when I rub his cheek glands, under his chin, and around his jowls. I know enough to stop and let him give me a signal if he wants more.
He’ll move if he’s had enough, but if I’m not paying attention and I persist, he’s got no qualms about smacking me or biting down on my hand. He’s learned that warning bites should be gentle, but after a clear warning, all bets are off.
I was awarded with ELEVEN scratches on my left arm last week, although that was a case of misdirected aggression, not an overstimulation outburst. I should have seen it coming, since I know the signs indicating he’s frustrated about something and needs to release energy.
Yes, my cat is a jerk. Yes, I still love him. In fact, I’m glad he’s my Buddy and he didn’t end up with people who think cats do things out of spite, or would physically punish him for acting like a cat. A jerk of a cat, but a cat all the same.
He’s taught me to pay very close attention to body language, ears, whiskers, tail swishing, and all the other ways cats signal to us aside from verbalizing their feelings.
How do your feline masters respond to petting, and what are their limits?
A new app aims to help us better understand and communicate with our cats.
A while back I wrote a post about MeowTalk, a new app that uses AI — and input from thousands of users sampling their cats’ vocalizations — to translate meows, trills and chirps for the benefit of those of us who don’t fluently speak cat or might need some clarity on what our furry friends are trying to say.
Now that I’ve finally had the opportunity to give MeowTalk a spin, it turns out Bud is a much more polite cat than I thought he was!
What I thought was an unenthusiastic “I acknowledge your presence, human” turned out to be “Nice to see you!” according to MeowTalk.
Buddy’s next meows were “Love me!” and “I love you!”, the app informed me. Weird. I thought he was complaining that I was only half-heartedly simulating prey with his wand toy while watching Jeopardy.
After Jeopardy I headed to the bathroom, which was the real test.
I intentionally closed the door before the little stinker could sneak in the bathroom with me, then held up the phone to capture his muted vocalization. I was sure Bud was saying “Open the door!” but the app told me Buddy was saying “I’m in love!”
Awww. What a good boy. How could I not let him in?
Once inside, Buddy began talking again as I knew he would. He’s a vocal cat.
“I’m looking for love!” the app translated as Bud pawed at the door, demanding to be let back out again. “My love, come find me!”
What was going on here?
Was Bud really professing his undying love for me, his human, or was he workshopping cheesy dialogue for a feline romance novel he’s been secretly working on?
Thankfully, MeowTalk allows you to correct translations if you think the app’s gotten them wrong. This looks more like it:
Translation from the original Buddinese language.
MeowTalk is in beta, and it can only get better as more users download the app, make profiles for their cats and make an effort to tag vocalizations with their correct meaning.
The app was authored by a software engineer who was part of the team that brought Amazon’s Alexa to life, and the algorithms that power it already show promise: When the app is listening (which it does only actively, after you have explicitly given it permission to do so), it does a great job of distinguishing cat vocalizations from background noise, human chatter, televisions and other incidental sounds. Even my fake meows were unable to fool it.
Each vocalization is sampled and saved to the history tab of your cat’s profile, so you can review and adjust the translations later. If you’ve got more than one cat you can make profiles for each one, and the app says it can tell which cat is talking. I wasn’t able to test this since the King does not allow interlopers in his kingdom, but given MeowTalk’s accuracy in distinguishing meows from every other sound — even with lots of background chatter — I have no reason to doubt it can sort vocalizations by cat.
In some respects it reminds me of Waze, the irreplaceable map and real-time route app famous for saving time and eliminating frustration. I was one of the first to download the app when it launched and found it useless, but when I tried it again a few months later, it steered me past traffic jams and got me to my destination with no fuss.
What was the difference? Few people were using it in those first few days, but as the user base expanded, so did its usefulness.
Like Waze, MeowTalk’s value is in its users, and the data it collects from us. The more cats it hears, the better it’ll become at translating them. If enough of us give it an honest shot, it just may turn out to be the feline equivalent of a universal translator.
And if it’s successful, its creator wants to make a standalone version as a collar, which would translate our cats’ vocalizations in real time. As far as I’m concerned, anything that can help us better understand our cats is a good thing.
Pain In The Bud 