Bisquit, the Cat Who Sings

First (sorry) a substantial wad of back-story, for those who've not watched my furry friends grow up at Yahoo: The current residents of the Cat Sanctuary are an extended family of very social cats. The two adult cats still living with me are sisters called Grayzel and Bisquit.

Bisquit is what I would describe as an extrovert cat, or a just plain annoying cat. She's smart, pretty, affectionate, sensitive, and intelligent. As a kitten she was especially close to her male calico litter mate who died young. Ever since he died I've suspected that Bisquit has yearned to be someone else's very favorite cat in the whole wide world. And I do like Bisquit, most of the time. It's just that one of her annoying traits is that, if I pet her, she starts putting on airs and ordering the other cats not to come when I call them or let me pick them up. So I seldom even touch Bisquit.

Bisquit's communication with me has, therefore, consisted mostly of her running under my feet, whining, and scratching or pushing over anything I leave on the porch. I've heard her growl and yowl at the other cats; I've heard her whine, that irksome repetitious "Meow? Meow? Meow?", when she wants extra food; and, once in a while when I have petted her, I've heard her purr.

That's about all most of the cats say with their voices, actually. Bisquit's sister Mogwai, like a long-ago unrelated cat called Pepper, used to do a little trill of pleasure when stroked. Bisquit's uncle Mac used to practice his "mating call" on me, showing that it really did mean "Come out and say hello" more than what tomcats actually say nonverbally when the female has said hello. And Magic, the long-ago founder of the Cat Sanctuary, was part Siamese and could do that eerie miniature-human-baby distress cry.

Most cats' voices are not especially pleasant to my ear. Grayzel is the exception. When she wants to get my attention, as it might be because she wants to go inside the house, she "meows" on an unusually high, clear, sweet pitch. Mogwai and Bisquit have never tried this.

Because the whole cat family is so special, I've let them have kittens. Unfortunately, they're all immune carriers of feline enteritis, which is trivial in humans, usually curable with antibiotics in adult cats and older kittens, but usually fatal in young kittens. Bisquit's first kitten, a male, died of enteritis.

She and her sisters practice birth control in the way cats naturally do--by allowing each other's kittens to nurse enough to delay the estrus cycle until the spring kittens reach puberty. Next spring, Bisquit had four more kittens. They all looked male, and during the first week when they came out of their nest and started nibbling on solid food, they all did nasty male-cat things all over the porch. They all moved on to their new home immediately.

Last spring, Bisquit finally gave birth to four healthy kittens, one of whom is a calico. Not only is this kitten polychromatic; she's also a polydactyl, like her father. Bisquit's mother, Polly, is too unique an animal to share her name...so in memory of a beautiful actress, Polly Bergen, I named Bisquit's daughter Candice. I promised her and Bisquit that she can stay at the Cat Sanctuary as long as she likes. So, for the first time, Bisquit is watching one of her very own kittens grow up. She fostered Mogwai's kittens when Mogwai moved out, but she's made it clear to me that that wasn't the same thing.

The other night, around sundown, I heard an extraordinary sound outside the office. It was definitely a song sung in a nonhuman voice. It trilled and warbled up and down a major scale. It sounded joyous. The closest thing to it I'd heard before was a mockingbird who lived in a bird sanctuary, but this song was all original and included no imitations of bird calls. It might almost have been an imitation of a human song...but it wasn't. No foundation tone, no clear rhythm.

I went out to see what was singing this song. Grayzel and Bisquit were in the yard, watching little Candice bat a dead mouse around. Bisquit caught my eye, interrupted her song with that little pleasure trill, and resumed singing.

A cliche of old bird books used to be the claim that birds sing little hymns of praise to God. My generation automatically react to this claim with "Yeah, right." So, do cats' brains have room for the thought humans express as "Praise the Lord" or "Thank God" or "Hallelujah"? I don't know. Maybe what Bisquit was saying, with her song, was closer to "Hurray for me! Hurray for my daughter! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

Come to think of it...humans often vent joy or ecstasy by babbling words that don't belong to the language they usually speak, or singing words that aren't part of a song they usually sing. Maybe singing is to cats what this "glossolalia" is to humans. Even for an extremely social and sensitive cat who's lived with a retired singer for four years, singing isn't normal cat behavior. Maybe "Callooh! Callay!" is exactly what Bisquit was saying.

All I know for sure is, I'm glad I've lived to hear one of my cats burst into a song of joy.