Concerning Cats 



and there is really a ' tongue ' for they always employ 

 the same sound to express the same thing." 



I heartily concur with him, and in addition have 

 often noticed the wide difference between the voice 

 and manner of expression of the gelded cat and 

 the ordinary tom. The former has a thin, high 

 voice with much smaller vocabulary. As a rule, 

 the gelded cat does not " mew " to make known his 

 wants, but employs his voice for conversational pur- 

 poses. A mother cat " talks " much more than any 

 other, and more when she has small kittens than at 

 other times. 



Cat language has been reduced to etymology in 

 several tongues. In Arabia their speech is called 

 naoua ; in Chinese, ming ; in Greek, larungizein ; 

 in Sanscrit, madj, vid, bid; in German, miauen; in 

 French miauler ; and in English, mew or " miaouw." 



Perhaps, if Professor Garner had turned his atten- 

 tion to cat language instead of monkeys we would 

 know more about it. But a French professor, Al- 

 phonse L6on Grimaldi, of Paris, claims that cats can 

 talk as readily as human beings, and that he has 

 learned their language so as to be able to converse 

 with them to some extent. Grimaldi goes even 

 further : he not only says that he knows such a lan- 

 guage, but he states definitely that there are about six 

 hundred words in it, that it is more like modem 

 Chinese than anything else, and to prove this conten- 

 tion, gives a small vocabulary. 



