Columnist Susan Snyder: This study is the cat’s meow

Friday, May 31, 2002 | 9:20 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

s you stand there in the heat waiting for a late bus to take you to that crummy minimum-wage job you hate, consider the weighty responsibilities of Nicholas Nicastro.

Nicastro is a doctoral psychology student at Cornell University who has analyzed human reactions to cats' meows.

He studied the catcalls of domestic, U.S. felines. He traveled to South Africa to compare those meows to the sounds made by African wildcats, believed to be the breed from which our house cats come.

I am not making this up.

Here in the states, Nicastro recorded 100 different cat meows from 12 different cats.

This took, in my estimation, about 37 years. For as soon as any self-respecting cat figures out you are interested in its meow, it becomes mute. (Same scientific principle that applies to taking photos of cats.)

He then played the meows for 54 volunteers, who rated them on appeal and urgency. (No, it doesn't say where he found such people.) Nicastro's analysis says humans consider short, evenly intoned meows less demanding. Long howls that would wake the dead signal an urgent matter.

In a release issued by Cornell, Nicastro said this latter call "is the kind we hear at 7 a.m. when we walk into the kitchen and the cat wants to be fed. The cat isn't forming sentences and saying, specifically, 'Take a can of food out of the cupboard, run the can opener and fill my bowl immediately.' But we get that message from the quality of the vocalization and the context in which it is heard."

Bunk.

First of all The Cat doesn't sleep until 7 a.m., nor does any human in the household. We're all awake by 4 a.m., because that is when the Feeding Ritual must begin.

Urging doesn't stop at a "meow" of any kind -- friendly, frantic, demanding or otherwise.

There are multiple meows, followed by a pawing action that drags the covers from the human's head. A single claw repeatedly poked into the human's forehead is the final wake-up call.

The "walk into the kitchen" is actually a dance whereby the sleep-deprived human stumbles into the doorjamb, a coffee table and trips over three Bizzy Balls while The Cat weaves in and out of his or her ankles.

The human gropes for the stove light, searches the refrigerator for the open can of food, finds a fork, discovers he or she doesn't bend all the way to the floor at such an hour, dumps half the food on the floor, manages to hit the bowl with some of it and stumbles back toward bed.

The Cat, not wanting to dine alone, follows, nipping and slapping at the human's feet until he or she returns to the kitchen.

Upon arrival The Cat looks at the food then looks at the human with an expression that says unmistakably, "What's this? Vomit?"

Not a single sound is needed.

Nicastro's mewsings concluded that through 5,000 years of interacting with us, cats haven't developed a language. But they "have become very skilled at managing humans to get what they want -- basically food, shelter and a little human affection."

Plus a weekly can of tuna, an occasional boneless, skinless chicken breast, a basket of clean laundry to sleep on, stuffed furniture to shed on, plants to chew, a bird feeder to watch and a human who jumps before dawn.