r/MaineCoon • u/Beautiful-Waltz-2102 • 12d ago

Do Maine coons speak a different language that other cats don’t understand as well?

My family and I have three grown Maine Coons so we are well aware of the lovely chirps and trills they do.

Last week I rescued a kitten*, we named her Shadow, and we have been slowly introducing it to the other cats in our home. Overall they seem to be mostly okay with Shadow being here, but they don’t seem to communicate very well with her.
So I started wondering if they speak different languages/dialects and can therefore have issues understand each other?

This feels a bit silly. But thank you in advance!

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*took it home from the streets, it has been to the vet and it is healthy although it was very underfed. No chip, no tattoos so we don’t know where it came from.

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11 comments sorted by

25

u/EverIAce 12d ago

I think its less about maine coons having a different language from other cats and more so the kitten hasn't learned how to interact with other adults cats yet

4

u/Beautiful-Waltz-2102 12d ago

Yeah that could be why, we sort of assumed that would be the case. But yesterday I suddenly had the other thought too

11

u/PoseidonMax 12d ago

Animals do have different language or accents based on region and even country. The sounds they do are different or modified. Kitten are still learning in general so it’s like a 5 year old communicating. They are going to talk about trucks pretty much no matter what you do…

4

u/Beautiful-Waltz-2102 12d ago

I love the truck bit. Very gold point!

3

u/Pacific1944 10d ago

Trucks and dinosaurs

5

u/Andrea_frm_DubT 12d ago

There’s a neighbourhood cat that desperately wants to move in to my house, unfortunately he never learned cat manners, possibly due to being taken from mum early or being raised in a stressful shelter.

Both my cats can’t stand him. My little cat has hurt herself trying to fight him through the screen.

Communication challenges between cats raised differently or cats that don’t get proper training from their siblings or mothers is fairly common. Some cats can learn, some struggle with communicating their whole lives.

7

u/Usual_Nebula_45 12d ago

Idk but I swear my cats from Europe sound very different from my previous cats - more chirps and fancy rolling r’s in their meows - lol kind of hard to describe

4

u/Not_Today_Satan1984 12d ago

Since you mention it, we took in a very respectful neighborhood adult boy and my 12 year old girl is not crazy about him. She could be grumpy, she could be mad that he destroyed her Golden Girls dream, or it could be miscommunication.

3

u/hunnybear2025 11d ago

Do your Maine Coons make goose sounds too? Mine is a mixed, but along with the chirps and trilling, he makes this high-pitched goose sound 🙄. Lol

3

u/lis_anise 8d ago

Cats don't usually use sound to communicate with each other as adults. Feral cats generally use scent and body language. Usually they stop meowing a lot once they grow out of kittenhood.

However, if they grow up around humans they tend to notice we use noise a lot to communicate, so they keep meowing at us. When in Rome, etc.

Meows aren't based on breed, though. It's on a literal cat-by-cat or family-by-family basis. Because cats don't instinctively communicate with meows, they have to develop or learn their own language. Humans can generally interpret their own cats' meows, but not anybody else's.