It is a truth most underappreciated that cats fully comprehend 100% of human languages.
English. Finnish. Xhosa. Teenage Boy. Whatever the Minions are meeping about.
If only we could return the favor.
Some years back, an author with a penchant for both empathy and marketing coined the term “love languages.” Since humans are easily overwhelmed once we run out of fingers, he limited them to five: words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, physical touch, and gifts. As the shtick goes, we are all capable of expressing and appreciating all five, but we tend to bend towards one or two.
The danger, of course, is being tone-deaf to true love when it’s expressed in a different dialect. As a Words of Affirmation girl, I’ll go goopy-kneed if you tell me I’m pretty and witty and have the coolest cat socks you’ve seen all week, but I may miss the meaning behind your hand on my forearm or your making the time to organize my Willie Nelson albums in chronological order without being asked. I gravitate towards love via vocabulary. You may gravitate towards surprise treasures, or taking on tasks, or pouring your time like lemonade into someone else’s pitcher.
Cats, made of multitudes, gravitate in all directions simultaneously.
Leaning wobbledy-pobbledy to our languages of preference, we underappreciate this. Fortunately, cats will not tolerate underappreciation.
And so they speak.
CAT tutors us in his mother tongue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, raining down “I love you’s” in the form of “kowabungas”. Swinging from SUITE’s invisible chandeliers, his exuberance is his truth, and the truth is that he loves you too much to lie still. He bounces off the walls when you arrive because the walls can’t contain his emotions. The chaos is the confession; the energy is the endearment; the excess is the expression of his dervishing devotion. CAT’s linguistics are calisthenics, and when you leave SUITE with your atoms vibrating, you’ll know you were loved. Love, quoth CAT, looks like mirth.
CAT speaks in a softer register, signing her letters with X’s and O’s that look a lot like peace signs. If CAT is at ease in your orbit, be assured that you are a beloved moon indeed. She does not cook casseroles of calm for every clanging newcomer; she does not let down her guard and her eyelids around any old acquaintance. If you tiptoe into her kitchen and don’t smell fear burning, that’s because her heart burns for you. You will need to study diligently, doing your translation homework and untangling CAT’s whispered alphabet, but in time you will hear her loud and clear. Love, quoth CAT, looks like safety.
CAT can speak fluent English, Danish, and Snoop Dogg, but he prefers to write his poetry in poundage. Whether or not you are fully seated, CAT will fully foist his fulsome person upon you, expressing infatuation through, well, fatuation. And just when your situation is dire and your entire lower body is at risk of falling asleep, CAT will awaken, and engulf you in his eyes, and take a break for several thousand calories before resuming his recital. This will give you time to stretch, and to stretch your soul into the oversized sweatshirt of smittenness. Love, quoth CAT, looks like lap colonization.
CAT is the rare cat who has devoted his life to dead languages. While less academically inclined neighbors pursue studies in string cheese and string theory, CAT has mastered Koine Greek, Ugaritic, and Silence. But unlike wordy worriers like you and me and all those meeping Minions, CAT knows: Silence is not dead. Silence, spoken tenderly, can bring the dead to life. And so CAT will silence your fears and quiet your chatterbox (the mean one who tells you that your ideas are stupid and your ship will never come in; not the innocent one who tells you that you should wear more neon and it’s not impossible Harrison Ford may someday be your personal friend). CAT will do this by the sheer force of his presence, so serene it could settle the dust anywhere love has gone dry. Love, quoth CAT, looks like calm.
The cats play a full xylophone of love languages at Tabby’s Place, up and down the scales in arpeggios of affection.
They say everything they mean, 100% of the time.
They may even bring us to the brink of being, not bilingual or trilingual, but felingual, a blissful state where we suddenly hear love spoken in a thousand accents.
And as it turns out, Tabby’s Place is tumbling with more languages than the United Nations. (Also more opinions. But we shall not speak today of the Feline Security Council, nor its decades-long stalemate regarding junior member status for humans; the equitable distribution of liverwurst; and proper prosecution for the war crimes of withholding dry food or playing anything other than Bruce and/or the BTS song “Butter” in the holding rooms.)
Maybe it’s a salutary side effect of spending so much time with cats, but our humans are hurling love languages in all directions. We just need to translate them.
Sometimes love looks like random acts of laundry.
Sometimes love looks like listening, without letting your eyes drop to your phone, while someone retells the story that makes her cry every time, and probably always will.
Sometimes love looks like texting “u home, queen?” after someone drives through angry rain.
Sometimes love looks like a card or a blueberry muffin or a special-edition DVD of “This is GWAR” on a desk after a dreary week.
Random acts of laundry, come to think of it, are always an intense expression of love.
Sometimes love looks like six strong hands on your back all at once, when your cat is gone and the spine of your heart is snapped in two.
Sometimes love looks like easy silence in the Lounge, side-by-side and soul-by-soul with no need to weave wordy webs.
Sometimes love looks like “you, too?!” moments, when brave eyes admit that CAT is their favorite, or the beach is not their favorite, or they want to be someone’s favorite, even though they feel like a mutant.
Always love looks like a lunatic species brave enough to be besotted enough to bespeak their love in every beam of the rainbow, until we get it, even if we never get it.
But I’m optimistic that we just might. At least, if we hang around Tabby’s Place long enough.
But first, we need to do the laundry. Do the next right thing. Do the work of delicate translation. And tell each other — with the full backing of the feline security council — that we’re witty, and pretty, and worthy of every word love can speak.