A lot of people tend to talk to their cats in a high-pitched voice filled with with cutesy terms. This is known as baby talk (or motherese), a type of simplistic speaking that an adult may adopt when speaking to a young child.
Baby talk is known in the science community as infant-directed speech. Baby talk directed towards cats is known as cat-directed speech. In addition to being high-pitched, cat-directed speech tends to draw out the vowels.
Benefits of Baby Talk With Cats
In turns out, there are a few benefits of using baby talk to communicate with your cat.
Baby talk helps you to bond with your cat
Similar to how parents bond with their infants through baby talk, researchers believe that using cat-directed speech helps strengthen the bond with pets. Cats tend to respond more positively to high-pitched voices than low-pitched ones. This positive reaction from the cat not only strengthens their connection but also helps owners feel more bonded with their pets.
Cats respond more to baby talk
Raising the pitch of your voice when speaking to dogs and cats is more beneficial than you might think. Studies show that both cats and dogs respond more positively to higher-pitched voices compared to deeper, low-pitched tones.
This reaction mirrors the way humans instinctively speak to babies, using a softer, more engaging tone to capture their attention. For pets, this high-pitched speech can create a sense of comfort and familiarity, helping to strengthen the bond between pets and their owners.
Cats respond better to high-pitched names
The same goes for cat names, according to one vet. Dr. Uri Burstyn, a Vancouver, Canada-based vet, postures that cats tend to respond more when they have high-pitched names. Burstyn explains that cat names that end in consonants are not as effective as names that end in a high-pitch.
In a YouTube video where Burstyn discusses his cat-naming hypothesis, he uses his long-haired cat, Lancelot, as an example. According to Burstyn, Lancelot isn’t an ideal name for a cat because it lacks the high-pitched sounds that cats are naturally attuned to. Cats hear high-pitched sounds better than low-pitched sounds because their prey animals, such as mice, communicate in high-frequencies.
Burstyn goes on to explain that his cat responds more positively to the nickname “Lancie,” as the name ends on a higher pitch. This reinforces the idea that cats react better to sounds that align with their natural hearing range, which is tuned for detecting higher frequencies.
Read next: Can Cats Understand Words?
References
Acevedo, D. (2017). The Association of Feline Behavior to Acoustical Features of Kitten Directed Speech. CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/184
Burnham, D., Kitamura, C., & Vollmer-Conna, U. (2002). What’s new, pussycat? On talking to babies and animals. Science, 296(5572), 1435-1435. DOI: 10.1126/science.1069587
Saito, A., Shinozuka, K., Ito, Y., & Hasegawa, T. (2019). Domestic cats (Felis catus) discriminate their names from other words. Scientific reports, 9(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-40616-4
