Am I daft or is there just not a zoological/ethological term for the sound cats do when they're "oh long johnson"-ing? It's not a growl, a yowl, a hiss, nor anything else as far as I can tell. It's during agitation, typically includes lip-licking, and is seemingly often prolonged. continued...
Apr 4, 2025 21:45Personally I refer to it as "incantations" because it sounds like they're speaking wizard gibberish interspersed with more recognizable sounds of cat aggression. There are vowels and consonants in there! 😂 i.e. "loco ookoop magooo...." (cat fans can hear this.) Clearly a curse! 🪄
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Also, I would differentiate this from what I call "Gargamels"-- this may be a my-cat-only thing ...? My cat will sing a long song with less defined syllables than "incantations", which includes trills (happy! not agitated) every time she picks up her favorite toy. She has to perform first. continued
Basically it sounds like she's going "Gargamel???? Gargamellllll? Brrrrr??? Prrrt? Brrrrrrgamel????" and so on. After a couple minutes of this she picks up her toy and carries it wherever she was heading with it.
tldr-- Can we get some new names for cat vocalizations?
