Confessions of a Cat Sitter
Chris Pascoe is the author of A Cat Called Birmingham & You Can Take the Cat Out of Slough , and a columnist for various UK & international magazines .
He ’ s also a cat sitter …
Quite a few of my clients have moved to the UK from abroad and obviously some of them from non-English speaking countries .
I ’ ve given this matter a lot of thought and I ’ ve decided that this must mean that their cats , the very cats I ’ m looking after and talking to as I prepare their meals and gold-pan their litter trays , don ’ t actually understand a word I ’ m saying .
This of course is worrying for three reasons :
1 ) I ’ m even less able to communicate with my foreign charges than I am my native ones .
2 ) The fact that I ’ ve given this a lot of thought .
3 ) I think of litter tray scooping as ‘ panning for gold .’ In fact though , when you think about it , the practices of litter tray sifting and gold panning are remarkably similar . Though in the litter tray ’ s case , you ’ re unlikely to be overjoyed by what you find .
Anyway , as stated , I realise cats only have a limited understanding of what you ’ re saying to them in any case , and ignore everything they do understand , but these cats have the ability to pointedly ignore me in a foreign language .
Take Wevers for example ; a lovely 18 year old lad recently arrived from Germany , and born in Holland ( and yes , I know it ’ s the Netherlands , but Wevers was actually born in Holland ... a province of the Netherlands . Ha !). Wevers looks at me as if I ’ ve gone completely mad when I babble on at him in what must sound like double-Dutch . But that ’ s just me speaking a foreign language … what about Wevers . Do cats from different regions sound any different at all ?
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It was time to waste an entire afternoon , with Wevers fast asleep on my lap , searching the internet on my phone . Procrastination or research , call it what you like ( it ’ s procrastination ).
I was stunned , though , when my nonsense search started to turn up some unexpected results . Cats from Spain , for instance , don ’ t meow – they maullido . Now that sounds like a very Spanish thing to do , doesn ’ t it ? And when they purr they ronroneando ( didn ’ t he play for Barcelona ?)’ while Czech felines purr a good predl and Estonians settle down for a ‘ mnurrumine ’ when stroked .
Back to meowing , Vietnamese cats are clearly talkative because one meow isn ’ t enough for them - they ‘ meo meo ’, while Albanian cats take to jaullin at you when they want feeding , and Czech ’ s prefer a good old noukani ’.
So Wevers , my little European friend , its miauw to you , and don ’ t think I can ’ t hear you schnurren ! And of course , Wevers being from Germany / Holland but actually a RUSSIAN Blue , will probably think something along the lines of ‘ I ’ m mypnblKaHbe , not schnurren , halfwit catsitter ’.
And , judging by the amount of time I spent researching the word meow this month , Wevers assessment of me would of course be absolutely correct .
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