Cat Telepathy: Twinkle Starr

In the last post, I told about a moment of contact with my cat Lilith. She didn’t have many other conversations with me – she was content with petting and food and a warm place to sleep. But her successors were a white, long-haired, feather-brained sweetie named Twinkle Starr, and a long-legged tiger tom (fixed) named Tigger, with a Siamese meow and a very quick understanding. 

Twinkle didn’t ask for much – being the family beauty and treated accordingly was enough for her. But she did have one problem. This was that I persisted in shutting the screen door, when she wanted it left open so she could go in and out as she pleased. It didn’t matter which side of the door she was on – when I shut it she began to wish she were on the other side.

This persistent failure to communicate led to her meowing forlornly before the screen door until I got up from my seat again, and let her pass through the same door she just went through in the other direction. Since what she really wanted was to have the door left open, she was never satisfied and there was a lot of forlorn meowing.

Then one day, as Twinkle was sitting with reluctant patience beside the closed screen door, I heard a girlish voice in my mind. It said,

Can I go out please?

I stared at her. She had told me what she wanted telepathically! I was so thrilled I stood up right away and let her out.

After that she knew she had me. I was so excited about hearing her wishes in that way, that she got what she wanted instantly. From Twinkle’s perspective, that was more like it! The next time Twinkle ambled over to the screen door and found it closed again, she looked over at me and again I heard

Can I go out please?

I complied promptly and she went out like a shot, obviously pleased. She had finally trained me!

Like Lilith, Twinkle saw no reason to expand her repertoire beyond that one practical application. But she used her one human trick for the rest of her life, and we all had to endure a lot less meowing. I found it much harder to blandly ignore her when she spoke to me in the voice of my own kind.