Cats can be very vocal creatures, but the exact meaning and intention behind these sounds can often be hard to read. In this episode, cat behaviorist Sarah Brown unpacks the hidden meanings behind cats’ vocalizations, body language and behavior. Then, veterinarian Kendra Baker takes us through her journey with Billi (AKA “Her MADjesty”) the cat who became an online sensation for her use of speaking buttons.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Steven Gutheinz - Der Mond
Steven Gutheinz - Angles
Steven Gutheinz - Between Two Worlds
Steven Gutheinz - Marquis
Katharine Petkovski - des enfants
Katharine Petkovsky - Michael Haydn
Katharine Petkovsky - after the sea
Ryan Taubert - Pokey
Josef Bel Habib - And There She Goes
Tres Leches - Cabsha
Butterstone - Convex Crea
Butterstone - Keeping Up
Steven Gutheinz - Multiplicity
Jesse Brown - Believe
Ludwig Moulin - Kitten on a Journey of Discovery
Megan Wofford - Wistful
Megan Wofford - Sunset Farewell
Megan Wofford - Come Spring

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View Transcript ▶︎

You’re Listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz, I’m Dallas Taylor.

[music in: Steven Gutheinz - Der Mond]

As humans, we love our cats. Nearly forty three million households in the US alone have a pet cat, and there are about three hundred and fifty million pet cats around the world. But just because we love them, that doesn't always mean we understand them. Cats can be very vocal creatures...

[sfx: several cat sounds]

But the exact meaning and intention behind these sounds can often be hard to read.

[music out with long meow]

Leila: The thing is, as much as we love our cats, they don’t always seem to reciprocate - certainly not the way dogs do.

That’s Twenty Thousand Hertz producer Leila Battison.

Leila: They’ve got a bit of a reputation for being aloof, standoffish, or at least fiercely independent.

[music in: Steven Gutheinz - Angles]

Sarah: They're not innately sociable.

Leila: That's doctor Sarah Brown.

Sarah: Some of them are better at it than others, I think to say the least.

Leila: Sarah has been researching cat behavior for over thirty years, and is the author of a book called The Hidden Language of Cats. She says the key to understanding your cat is to walk a mile in their paws.

Sarah: Cats come from a solitary ancestor, unlike dogs, which had a preformed set of social signals inherited from their wolf ancestors. [SFX: wolf howl]

Sarah: With cats, their behavior is a little bit more subtle and a bit harder to read sometimes.

Leila: In fact, us humans are totally oblivious to most of the communication going on between them.

Sarah: Cats’ go-to way of communicating is via scent. They would leave a scent for another wild cat to pick up later and keep their distance from each other. So to come from that to living amongst other cats and amongst people, the domestic cat has had to develop new ways of communicating.

Leila: In the natural world, cats tend to be fairly quiet.

Sarah: It makes sense because in the wild, you don't want to make a lot of noise and bring attention to yourself.

Leila: Cats are in the uniquely tricky situation of being predators, but also still small enough to be prey to bigger hunters.

Sarah: If you're a small feline, [SFX sound design: leaves rustling, mouse squeaking] you want to be able to catch things and not bring attention to your prey so that you miss them. And you don't want to be caught by anything else. [SFX: hawk cry]

Sarah: So predator and prey species tend to be quiet when they're in the wild.

Leila: Most of the time, cats make different noises with each other than they do with us.

Sarah: Cats communicating with other cats very rarely meow. Cats mostly reserve their vocalizations for three types of occasions. And that is one, finding a mate [SFX: yowl] two, fighting [SFX: growl] and three, mother kitten communications [SFX: chirrup].

Sarah: Those first two are very noisy, and it's that last set of noises, the mother kitten sounds that people most enjoy. And these seem to be the vocalizations the cats have carried through into interacting with people. So the meows… [SFX: meow] the trills… [SFX: trill/meow] and the chirrups, the little gentle sounds. [SFX: chirrup]

[music in: Katharine Petkovski - des enfants]

Leila: Over the millenia, cats have had to hone in on the kind of communication that we're used to, which is sound.

Sarah: And this is probably because we don't really understand or notice half the other things they do to us. We don't notice their scent deposits. We don't always notice their tail signals. And they know that just as when they meow to their mother when they're kittens… [sfx: kitten meow] that when they meow at us… [sfx: adult cat meow] it gets our attention.

Leila: Sarah has seen feral cats figure this out in real time.

Sarah: One of the cats in the colony that I studied, he would come and sit near me every night when I fed the colony. And he was probably the tamest of all of them, but he would always keep his distance. And then one day, he just meowed at me. [sfx: meow]

Sarah: He'd worked out that that was a way of communicating with me. And I just think that that's just amazing that they worked that out.

Leila: Since cats were first domesticated, the meow itself has evolved. And today, it's strikingly close to a sound that we have evolved to care about.

Sarah: The average pitch of an adult domestic cat's meow is around 600 Hertz. [SFX: meow + 600 hz note]

Sarah: And interestingly enough, the cries of a healthy human baby average out at about 400 to 600 Hertz as well. [SFX: baby cry + 600 hz note]

Sarah: Which might not sound very astonishing, except for that if you record the meows of an African wild cat, which is the ancestor of the domestic cat, they come in at around 255 Hertz. [SFX: wild cat cry and 255 hz note] So much lower pitched than the domestic cat.

Sarah: And so pitched about the same level, both cat meows and baby cries seem to be particularly hard to ignore. [SFX: cry and meow overlaid]

Leila: This vocal manipulation works both ways.

Sarah: People change their tone of voice when they speak to a cat or a dog to a much higher pitch, similar to the way we speak to babies. We speak more slowly and we speak like this. “Oh, you know, how are you?”

Sarah: But why we use it to speak to cats and dogs is a bit of a mystery. Do we think that they're our babies? Or are we trying to emulate their higher pitch meows, so that they recognize that we're talking to them?

Leila: Whatever the reason, cats do recognize this baby talk.

[music in: Katharine Petkovsky - Michael Haydn]

Sarah: One study showed that, when listening to their owner speak, they could tell the difference between speech directed deliberately at them…

Baby Talk: C’mere kitty! Ready for dinner?

Sarah: …and normal speech that people use with other adults.

Leila: But even if a cat knows you’re talking to it, how much does it actually understand?

Sarah: Quite often they appear not to understand a single word we say, right? But they have started to do more studies on what exactly cats can understand.

Sarah: One of the things they’ve found out is that they can recognize the voice of their owner from other people's voices. And they also recognize their names. They can pick out their name from a series of other words that sound similar.

Leila: But compared to dogs, it can be hard to confirm when a cat really understands something.

Sarah: Part of the reason is that they don't respond like dogs where they come running up as soon as you say their name. They might twitch their ears a bit more when you say their name, or they might turn their head, but they have a very more subtle way of responding to anything we say. And so we do often think they're ignoring us, but I think they hear and understand a lot more than they let on.

Leila: We can hardly blame cats for not understanding us though, when we fare little better when trying to decode their meows.

Sarah: If you record a bunch of meows in different contexts, so say you record a greeting meow [SFX: happy meow] and a meow where a cat's in a cat carrier, so it's sad. [SFX: sad meow]

Sarah: If you play these meows back to people without any visual context, they find it really hard to identify the context.

Leila: But the rate of success does increase when owners are listening to the meows of their own cat.

Sarah: This sort of shows that people and their cats develop, gradually, a way of communicating. So the cat gradually realizes what works on their person, and the person gradually recognizes a particular meow. [sfx: meow]

Leila: When trying to decode a cat's meow, there are some general patterns that you can listen for.

Sarah: So a positive meow, like in a greeting or if it wants to be fed, the pitch will rise towards the end of meow. [SFX: rising meow]

Sarah: And a distressed meow, like traveling in a cat carrier or going to the vet, will fall in pitch. [SFX: falling meow]

Leila: Beyond this, the key to understanding cats is in their body language. You can start with the ears.

[music in: Ryan Taubert - Pokey]

Sarah: So ears are very mobile. They move from one position to another so quickly that you don't know if the cat's just listening to something, or whether its mood is changing very quickly.

Sarah: But basically, if they're upright, that's usually alert and happy and quite content. If the ears are swiveled backwards, that is usually an aggressive type stance. That usually means they're feeling quite angry.

Sarah: And if the ears are very flat, sort of proper aeroplane flat ears, that's usually a fear type position. And they're often crouched with their ears really flat to their head.

Leila: Making yourself smaller when you’re frightened is a natural response of lots of wild animals—using your body language to say, “Please, don’t notice me!”

Leila: And conversely...

Sarah: When they're feeling aggressive, their fur literally fluffs up, and they stand sideways, and do that sort of arched position with their tail fluffed up to make themselves appear as big as possible to their opponent.

Leila: Fear and aggression are often accompanied by some of cats’ most noisy, unpleasant sounds, like growls… [SFX: growl] yowls… [SFX: yowl] and hisses… [SFX: hiss]

Leila: These are all basically ways of saying, "Back off! Don't mess with me!"

[music in: Josef Bel Habib - And There She Goes]

Leila: But all being well, your neighborhood cat won't consider you their enemy, and a chance interaction is likely to begin with a raised tail.

Sarah: The raised tail is a greeting signal. And it means basically, “I come in peace.”

Leila: In this, our pet cats have something in common with a much more formidable feline.

Sarah: Out of all the cat species in all the world, there's only two that have this tail up signal, and that is the lion and the domestic cat. And interestingly, those are the only two species that have a social structure.

Leila: Whereas cougars, leopards and cheetahs all live in relative isolation from one another, lions and wild domestic cats tend to live in groups.

Sarah: They think that the tail up signal has evolved separately in these two species, having to have signals that other cats could see and understand. It's like, “Well, what can we use to make a signal to each other?” And, “Oh, I’ll use my tail!” [laugh]

Leila: In domestic cats, that raised tail can often be accompanied by a sound called a trill, or chirrup. [SFX: trill/chirrup]

Sarah: So they originate from the sound that a mother cat uses to her kittens when she returns to the nest in the wild. She makes this beautiful chirrup sound. [SFX: trill/chirrup]

Sarah: Actually, they've found out that kittens can actually recognize their own mother's chirrup from other mother's chirrups. So they know from a very young age that this is their mum making that noise.

Sarah: Adult cats use this same sound to us, in greeting, really. So you might walk into a room and your cat goes, “Purr!”

Sarah: And often, they weave it in with meows as well. So there might be a sort of a meow trill going on, which is a happy greeting sound. [SFX: meow trill]

[music in: Tres Leches - Cabsha]

Leila: What comes next is basically the cat version of a handshake, when it rubs its face against your hand or leg.

Sarah: Yeah, it's a greeting behavior, but also has an element of scent in it. They have glands all around their faces so that when they rub on something, they're depositing their scent on, either an object, or another cat, or a person.

Leila: The rub becomes an invitation for more body contact, but the trick is to let the cat take the lead.

Sarah: There's been studies that show that interactions that are started by the cat last longer than interactions started by a person. The best way is to basically hold out your hand so that they can come and sniff you, and work out your smells and what you're about.

Leila: If you’ve made it this far, you should have the green light for more pets.

Sarah: They love to be petted around the chin and the head and the ears.

Leila: If the cat is liking the attention, you may be able to tell through its eyes.

Sarah: Eye contact is really interesting in cats, because they're not programmed to look at each other a lot. And so they don't like staring. That might be perceived as hostile.

Sarah: So cats tend to glance a bit more at each other. But there's this wonderful behavior that cats do to people and people can do back to cats, which is called the slow blink. And so if you find yourself gazing at a cat for maybe a little bit long, if you try blinking really slowly, or kind of half blinking, or squinting at them, they'll quite often do this slow blink back, which is an indication that they're feeling comfortable in your presence.

Sarah: I think it's a lovely thing. It's like a little smile with your eyes.

Leila: If everything has gone well up to this point, there’s a good chance you’ll be treated to one of the most wonderful sounds that a cat has in their repertoire… and that’s the purr.

[SFX: younger purr in]

Sarah: Cats first purr when they're kittens with mum and their siblings in the lovely, cozy, environment of the nest. And I think this is a way of communicating, contentedly with your siblings, but also a way of self-soothing. It’s sort of a sign that, you know, “Everything's good and I want it to stay this way.“

Sarah: So when they get older, and you've got your cat on your lap, and it's snuggling away, and you're stroking it, they do the same thing then. They feel content, and so they start to purr.

[SFX: older purr in]

Sarah: For a long time, they didn't know how cats purred at all. But the current science says that purring is controlled by a neural oscillator or purring center in the brain. And this sends signals to the muscles of the larynx, and these muscles open and close the space between the vocal cords, which creates vibrations at a rate of 25 to about 150 a second. And this results in a sort of continuous purring sound as the cat inhales and exhales.

Sarah: And what's really interesting about purring is that whilst domestic cats can purr, and some of the larger wild cats can purr, like cheetahs... [SFX: cheetah purr] some of the big cats, lions, for example, roar. [SFX: roar] But they can't purr. So cats that roar can't purr, and vice versa.

Sarah: And they think that this is to do with the structure of the vocal cords. Basically, that big cats have much fleshier vocal cords than those that can purr, so it makes a different noise.

Leila: If a cat is really relaxed, its purr might be accompanied by the rhythmic motion of tiny paws making biscuits. This behavior starts as kittens, when kneading on their mother helps to stimulate milk production. And like purring, kneading continues into adulthood. It brings them comfort, and also marks their favorite people and places with the scent glands in their feet.

[music in - Katharine Petkovsky - after the sea]

Leila: Purring might be the ultimate sign of feline contentment, but not every purr is a happy one.

Sarah: Cats also purr when they go to the vet sometimes, when they're feeling a bit stressed. And cats have also been known to purr when they're actually dying, and in pain. So in that situation, it must be some kind of self soothing, hark back to kittenhood where purring brings some sort of comfort.

Leila: Purring may also be an audible signal to potential enemies. Basically, whether it's happy or suffering, a purring cat is not a threat.

Leila: But not every sound that a cat makes is meant to communicate something. Some they seem to make out of pure, enigmatic instinct.

Sarah: So chittering or chattering is what a cat does usually when it's watching something out of a window, like a bird that it can't get to. [SFX: chitter]

Sarah: It's a funny noise. It almost sounds like their teeth are chattering, [SFX: chitter] It's like they can't help themselves. It just comes out.

Leila: What it actually means, however, is a bit of a mystery. It’s a sound that seems to be reserved for prey animals that are just out of reach.

Sarah: It's most likely frustration, I think, or some people have said that cats are attempting to attract the attention of the birds outside, or even trying to mimic the birds themselves.

[SFX: bird call and chitter]

[ramp into music in: Butterstone - Convex Crea]

Leila: The vocal habits of cats can also change throughout their lifetimes.

Sarah: They get a sort of cognitive dysfunction type thing as they get older, a bit like people, and they can get quite disorientated, particularly at night.

Leila: As a result of this feline dementia, an older cat can end up making more noise than ever.

[sfx: old cat yowl]

Sarah: We had a cat that did that. And he was 19, and he would wander the hall at night going, “Mrow, mrow.” [sfx: old cat yowl]

Sarah: The best way to help that is to leave some gentle lights on, put the radio on, ‘cause quite often they're looking to find you, and they can't work out where you've gone.

Leila: So while cats can sometimes seem aloof and superior, the reality is that they're doing their best to communicate with us.

Leila: It’s not their fault if we are too wrapped up in our own human world to notice.

Sarah: We think of everything in terms of how humans experience the world. We're very obsessed with vocalizations and talking all the time. But cats don't. They live in a world of scent. It's all about how something smells. They're coming at everything from a different point of view, and we just have to try and look at it from their point of view.

Leila: By learning more about that point of view, we can strengthen our relationship with these creatures that we spend years and years of our lives with.

Sarah: Every bit you learn about your cat creates a better relationship with them, longterm.

[music out into music in: Steven Gutheinz - Der Mond]

Leila: Traditionally, understanding our cats has meant paying close attention to their noises, body language, and behavior. But today, modern technology is taking us one step further, and giving our pets the tools to start communicating on our level.

[clip: Billi Speaks]

Billi Clip: Now. Want. Food.

Leila: In particular, there's one trailblazing feline that has shed light on how cats think, and has helped open the door to a more collaborative relationship between humans and pets.

Billi Clip: Cuddle.

Kendra Clip: Yes baby, come on.

Leila: That’s coming up, after the break.

MIDROLL

[music in: Steven Gutheinz - Der Mond]

Leila: Cats may not be the most forthcoming communicators, but if we can learn to read their body language and the nuances of their meows, we'll have a much better chance of knowing what they’re thinking.

Leila: But these days, there are a few cats making waves for speaking human, leaving us with no room for misunderstanding. And one of those cats is Billi.

Kendra: Billi was a sweet cat to everyone, except for the cats and dogs that she did not like.

Leila: That’s Kendra Baker, Billi’s human mom. Kendra's a traveling veterinarian for zoos and wildlife. She and Billi first found each other sixteen years ago.

Kendra: I was in undergrad, and was driving home with a friend, and a furball ran across the road chasing a rodent of some kind.

[SFX: honk, brakes screech, mild car crunch sound]

Kendra: Unfortunately, the cars on the other side of the road did get into a little bit of a fender bender. But I jumped out of the car, and I picked her up, and my friend and I drove around trying to find her home.

Kendra: We put up all sorts of signs, and no one claimed her. So she just ended up staying with me. I wasn't necessarily in the market for an animal at that point, but I am very glad that the cat distribution system chose me.

[music in: Steven Gutheinz - Multiplicity]

Leila: Billi was about four months old when Kendra brought her home. She grew into a beautiful gray calico with big green eyes.

Kendra: Billi was always that cat that people who didn't like cats, they changed their mind once they met her. She just had the biggest personality, was always just wanting to be around other people, and just had this love for exploring and new things that really spoke to me.

Leila: From an early age, Billi was a great communicator.

Kendra: Billi was incredibly verbal. And when it was food time, we would get a frantic kind of running around my ankles, tails upright, whiskers are forward, and a nice long meow. [sfx: long meow]

Leila: As a veterinarian, Kendra knows the importance of a strong mutual understanding with our pets.

Kendra: For a lot of us, they are a huge part of our lives. But for the most part, they live in a dictatorship. You know, it's a dictatorship built on love, but we decide when they eat, we decide what they eat, we decide when they go outside, we decide the extra things that they get in their life. Any kind of enrichment, we are responsible for.

Kendra: And that's their entire life. And so I do think that there is a lot that we can do to really improve their quality of life.

Leila: Kendra was always on the lookout for ways to enrich Billi’s life. She started following a few people on social media who were teaching their dogs to use buttons that would play back a word when stepped on.

Dog Clip: Paw. Play.

Kendra: The buttons in animals are a concept that was taken from human speech pathology, and in humans, it is called “alternative and augmentative communication,” and it is a way to give nonverbal humans a voice.

Kendra: And the principle is essentially the same. You choose words that are rewarding or reinforcing for your learner, whether it’s a dog or a cat.

Leila: To teach a dog or a cat a new word, you have to model it, just like you would with a baby.

Kendra: If someone hands you a cup and says “cup” every single time for three weeks, you're probably going to associate that object with that word.

[toddler saying "cup"]

[music in: Butterstone - Keeping Up]

Leila: At first, Kendra wasn’t sure if these buttons would work with Billi.

Kendra: I didn't know any cats that were doing it. And at that point, the only buttons that were available were the ones that they used in humans, so they're really large learning resources buttons. And when I looked at them, my biggest concern was that Billi wasn't actually going to be heavy enough to depress them.

Leila: To start out, Kendra went against what everybody online recommended, and introduced the ‘food’ button first. [SFX: food button]

Kendra: And the reason that that is not recommended is that frequently, they can become fixated on it.

[SFX: food button repeated]

Leila: But Kendra figured that if Billi did have the strength to push that big button, food would be the best possible motivator.

Kendra: So that's what we did. And it took her about three and a half weeks of consistent modeling before she pressed the button with intent.

[SFX: food button + music transition]

Leila: After that, Kendra started to introduce more buttons. [SFX: pets button, mousey, outside button]

Kendra: And then from there, it really increased at a pretty rapid rate. I had no idea just how big it would get.

Leila: Eventually, Billi’s button board grew to over seventy five individual words

[SFX: button montage]

Kendra: She used them all, some of them significantly more frequently than others. When I started, I was definitely going to tell you that “Food” would be her most pressed button. But actually, it turned out to be a tie between “Pets” and “Play.”

Leila: The buttons gave Billi more of a voice, helping her to get the attention she wanted in a noisy human world.

[music in: Jesse Brown - Believe]

Kendra: The point of them is to give your animals a way to express their desire in a manner that humans pay more attention to. Prior to the buttons, if Billie wanted to play, her choices would have been to, you know, come up to me, maybe move around my legs, potentially bring me a toy. [SFX: jingly toy]

Kendra: But all of those are kind of soft requests when you are used to verbal communication the way that we are as humans. So when the buttons are involved, it becomes significantly harder for us as humans to ignore a Play request.

[SFX: play button repeated x2]

Leila: Billi could also express things that would otherwise have been much harder to read. For instance, when Billi's dad went out of town, Billi asked for him repeatedly.

[Billi Speaks clip]

Billi Clip: Dad.

Kendra Clip: Dad not home. Dad home later later. Couple more days.

Billi Clip: Want.

Leila: Over time, Billi began to speak more English than cat.

Kendra: She would press up to 200 a day, more sometimes, depending on how long I was home for. She did still meow occasionally, but significantly less. And usually it was in situations where she really wanted to play, and we were not listening to her. It was more of an exclamation point.

[Billi Speaks clip]

Billi Clip: Catnip.

Kendra Clip: Catnip? Outside catnip? You want catnip outside?

Billi Clip: [Two meows]

Leila: Not all of Billi’s buttons were for tangible objects or simple actions. Some communicated more abstract concepts, like “Love,” “Favorite,” or “Mad.”

[SFX: mad button]

Leila: So how do you model something like mad to a cat?

[music in: Ludwig Moulin - Kitten on a Journey of Discovery]

Kendra: Anyone who has a cat, they know that any mild inconvenience is probably going to be catastrophic for them, right? So for Billi, it was mild inconveniences. So, if it was not food time, but she wanted food, then we would model “Mad.” [SFX: mad button]

Kendra: The other one that I did frequently for Billi, was she would love to be on my lap whenever I was sitting down. And if I let her, she would just stay there all day. She would never move. So unfortunately, every time that I needed to move her to go to the bathroom or to get up, to go to work, I would model the Mad button. [SFX: mad button]

Kendra: And, I only modeled the mad button three times before she started pressing it on her own.

[clip: Billi Speaks]

Billi Clip: Mad. Mad.

Kendra Clip: Billy, why are you mad?

Billi Clip: Mad. Mad.

Kendra Clip: Why?

[SFX: mad button with bell jingle]

Kendra: To very much so anthropomorphize, it seemed like she had just been waiting for the opportunity to say it to me. And she finally got it, and she was like, “Ugh, thank you! I have been holding this inside forever.”

[clip: Billi Speaks]

Billi Clip: Mad. Mad.

Kendra Clip: Why are you mad? Because there’s a yoga mat in the middle of the floor? Oh, because you want food.

Billi Clip: Food. Food.

Kendra Clip: Okay. That makes more sense. Later.

Billi Clip: [Meow].

Kendra Clip: I know.

Billi Clip: Mad.

Kendra Clip: I know. I know you’re mad.

Leila: Billi got so good at using these buttons that Kendra started posting videos of her online.

Kendra: You know, I posted one of her very early videos on TikTok…

[clip: Billi Speaks]

Billi Clip: Pets.

Kendra Clip: Okay. You can have more pets.

Billi Clip: Pets. Pets.

Kendra Clip: Alright. You only have to press it once.

Billi Clip: Pets.

Kendra Clip: Okay!

Kendra: …And I woke up in the morning and it had gone viral. The buttons were still incredibly new at this point. And then Billi was the first cat. So I think that kind of kickstarted us, and then once Billi got a hold of the Mad button, it was all over.

Leila: People just loved the idea of a cat that knew the word “mad.” The Dodo interviewed Kendra for a video called, “This Cat’s Favorite Word is Exactly What You’d Expect.”

[clip: The Dodo]

Kendra Clip: I added the Mad button.

Kendra Clip: Why are you mad?

Billi Clip: Mad. Mad. Mad…

Kendra Clip: That was absolutely her favorite word. And she could not stop pressing it.

Leila: That video alone has over 25 million views. And today, Billi's social media channels have almost a million total followers.

Kendra: That's crazy to me. I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that that many people loved watching Billi.

[music in: Steven Gutheinz - Between Two Worlds]

Leila: Billi became affectionately known as ‘Her Mad-jesty’, and this one cat, and her owner, became an inspiration to thousands.

Kendra: Most of the comments that I get are, you know, “You really have taught me a better way to interact with my cat, or improved the communication that I have with my cat currently.” And they have expressed that my relationship with Billi helped their relationship with their cats. That's a very humbling experience to read all of those, because I had no idea.

Leila: Eventually, Billi caught the attention of scientists studying how animals think and communicate. Today, there’s a collaborative research project being done around pets that use these speech buttons, including Billi.

Kendra: This is the largest citizen science project that has ever taken place. There are participants in every continent, except for Antarctica. There are numerous languages, so it's not just people who speak English who are doing this.

[SFX: montage of buttons in different languages]

Kendra: The new buttons are actually Wi-Fi enabled, and so every time they're pressed, that press gets sent into an app, and the lab has access to all of that. So they're really able to get a ton of data.

Leila: With all that data, scientists hope to figure out once and for all what cats and dogs are capable of understanding, and expressing.

Leila: But even without this research, Kendra still recommends buttons as a way of enhancing your relationship with your cat.

Kendra: For them, it is really just enrichment for their life. It is a way for them to have a little bit more control over their day to day.

Leila: And of course, it's rewarding for the owners, too.

[music in: Steven Gutheinz - Marquis]

Kendra: Every interaction with her was just a delight. Every time that she pressed the “Mad” button, every time that she did anything with her buttons, it just gave me so much joy.

Billi Clip: Love you.

Kendra Clip: I love you too. Want some pets? Pets.

Billi Clip: Yes.

Kendra Clip: Yeah? Kay. Good girl.

Billi Clip: Love you.

Kendra Clip: Love you! Love you.

Billi Clip: Love you.

Kendra Clip: Okay. I love you too, I’m glad I’m home also.

Kendra: We learn a lot in veterinary school about your domestic animal behavior, but I think that living this experience with Billi probably did more for me for feline behavior than any of my classes ever did. And it really makes you reevaluate the way that we interact with our pets.

Leila: As Billi got older, she started to need more of Kendra's professional veterinary help.

Kendra: So Billi was born with a condition called polycystic kidney disease. And what that means is that from birth, her kidneys started throwing cysts out, so little pockets of fluid. And initially, there isn't necessarily any abnormal signs that you see with that, but it does predispose cats and humans to kidney failure.

[music in: Megan Wofford - Wistful]

Leila: When Billi was twelve, her health took a turn for the worse, and she underwent a series of operations to keep her kidneys working.

Kendra: In cats, we grade kidney failure in four different stages one is the lowest and four is the highest. And she had been managed at two prior to that last surgery. And then afterwards, she was steadily in the three phase.

Kendra: But unfortunately earlier this year, in February, I did find that her blood values had increased again, and she had jumped into stage four.

Leila: At that point, Kendra’s options were pretty limited.

Kendra: There is no cure, there's not really a way to turn back time. You can really only manage the symptoms once it gets to a certain point.

Leila: From then on, Kendra’s priority became making sure that Billi had the best possible quality of life. To help with this, she used Billi's Ouch button... [sfx: Ouch button] as well as a new one. [sfx: Medicine button]

Kendra: Having to give your cat a pill is, it's a lot for you, but it's also a lot for them. If you can imagine that the roles were reversed, if you had the flu, and someone jumped on you once a day and shoved something in your mouth, I don't think that we would associate anything good with that.

Leila: So instead of forcing pills down her throat, or hiding them in food, Kendra used the medicine button to help Billi understand.

Kendra: I made sure that she saw what I was doing with the pill. And then using my words, I would say "Medicine help ouch bye." And I would say, "Medicine, then food.” And within 36 hours, she started taking it voluntarily.

Kendra: And I have a number of these videos of, it's so cute to watch them, because you can tell that she hates it. You know, she'd pick up the pill and then she'd kind of, “Ugh!” And then she'd drop it and then she'd pick it up, and then she'd drop it, and then she'd finally like swallow it. But it took a really long time.

Kendra: It was fascinating to watch how just 36 hours of me changing my behavior led to this improvement in our ability to make sure that she was well managed.

[music in: Megan Wofford - Sunset Farewell]

Leila: Slowly but surely, Billi started using her buttons less and less.

Kendra: When I stopped to think about it, it really made sense. You know, if you're not feeling well, the last thing that you want to do is have a conversation with anyone, right? It just takes a lot more energy.

Leila: Eventually, Billi wasn’t eating much. Then, she stopped wanting to go outside.

Kendra: I'm thankful because she declined pretty rapidly there at the end. We had a couple of good days, but then, when I got home, she was just under the bed and not really responding to me, and wouldn't get up.

Kendra: So that was kind of a cue of, “Okay, we're, uh… we're definitely not coming back from this one.” So, I made the decision for her to have an end that did not last days.

Kendra: So the decision of watching her slowly waste away, versus allowing her to pass peacefully, I absolutely chose the latter. It's definitely the one that I would choose again and again, rather than watching my best friend fade.

Leila: I spoke to Kendra just a couple of weeks after Billi had passed.

Kendra: It is definitely raw. It's definitely an adjustment that I have not really thoroughly internalized yet. It's weird when there's a presence in your life for almost sixteen years to just not have them there anymore.

[music out into music in: Megan Wofford - Come Spring]

Leila: Whether it's using tools like Billi’s buttons, or just taking the time to get to know our cat’s sounds and body language, both pets and owners stand to gain so much.

Kendra: I think that Billi really helped me to become just a more compassionate person in general, a more empathetic person. I found myself putting myself in her shoes, and what that did is it made me look outside of myself in every aspect of my life.

Kendra: And I think that she probably improved my ability to be a kind human, not just for, you know, other animals, but other people as well. It becomes a lot easier to look at someone who is not like you, and really feel empathy for that situation.

Kendra: I think she just made me a better person.

Billi Clip: Love you!

Kendra Clip: I love you too.

Billi Clip: Love you!

Billi Clip: Mom.

Kendra Clip: I love you too, baby.

Billi Clip: Yes.

Kendra Clip: Yes. Yes, I love you.

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Hear more at Defacto sound dot com.

Leila: This episode was written and produced by Leila Battison.

Other Voices: And Casey Emmerling, with help from Grace East. It was sound designed and mixed by Graham Gold and Justin Hollis.

Thanks to our guests, Sarah Brown and Kendra Baker. For more tips on how to better understand your cat, be sure to pick up Sarah’s book The Hidden Language of Cats.

You can find Billi's videos on Youtube, Instagram and TikTok, under the username Billi Speaks. And if you want to learn about the buttons that Billi used, Kendra has lots of info at billi speaks dot com.

I'm Dallas Taylor. Thanks for listening.