How Fluffy Communicated

In this post we want to remember the various ways that Fluffy would communicate with us. Sometimes she was telling us that she was happy, typically by purring, and other times she was trying to get our attention to let us know that she was hungry or needed help with something. I loved it when Fluffy would purr, that was the best. It let us know that she was happy and content, which confirmed for us that we were doing a good job as her parents. She would often begin to purr while we were getting her food ready and especially as we placed it on the ground for her. Fluffy would almost always purr as we were petting her and sometime just sitting down next to her and letting her know that we were near was enough to get the purrs going.

Sometimes Fluffy's communications were a bit harder to understand. For instance, when we let her in from one of her adventures outside and opened the door from the garage to house, she would come running in and as she ascended the stairs should would be grunting the entire way. I am not sure what the grunts meant. Was she telling us that she was upset and she thought we left her outside for too long? Was she voicing her frustration of how steep and long the stairs were? We will never know for sure, but it often made us laugh and is not something that we had ever heard a cat do.

Fluffy was the most communicative around what she thought was her dinner time. She would often meow loudly to get our attention and remind us that we had to feed her. If we did not react immediately to her load meows, she would often rub up against our legs and circle us many time to ensure we knew that she was there and that she needed something. Once it a while she would jump up on our desks and stare us down until she got what she wanted. Sometimes, as I believe I mentioned before, she would follow me while I went to bathroom and greeted me with a loud meow when I opened the door. She would then run off towards her bowl, expecting me to follow and fill it with food. Most nights/mornings Fluffy would wake Sam up multiple times for various reasons. Sometime she was lonely and wanted attention while most times she just wanted food. There were also time that she just needed to go outside. I think she was often just bored as she was a night owl.

Like most cats, Fluffy would let us and any other animal that might come around that we and everything in the house belonged to her my rubbing up against it with her cheek and marking it. Also, like most animals with a tail, you could a lot about how she was feeling and what she was thinking by the placement of her tail. When she was frightened her tail would be tucked between her legs. When she was excited it would be wagging back and forth quickly. One of my favorite non-verbal forms of her communication was how she would act when she was hunting by crouching down real low and her tail would not move at all, only her eyes would move, following her prey.

Fluffy also had ways of letting us know that she was upset. Typically, if we did not give her as much food as she thought she needed, she would go to her cardboard scratching box and and go to town. We would then ask her what was the matter and she would just keep scratching. One time, for fun, I asked Alexa to make cats sounds and I would open my mouth as the cat sounds were played by Alexa and Fluffy started hissing at me, letting me know that there was room for only one cat in this house.

It was our greatest pleasure getting to know Fluffy and what made her happy and frustrated. She was the sweetest cat and occasionally she let us know that she was unhappy, but most of the time she would just purr and want to be close to us.