Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
Speaker 1: Hoore Cham and in this short bonus episode, we're answering
Speaker 1: the question can a cat talk to a dog? This
Speaker 1: is a companion piece to our recent full episode about
Speaker 1: animal communication. If you haven't listened to that one, be
Speaker 1: sure to check it out. But in this mini episode,
Speaker 1: I catch up to my friend and science fiction author
Speaker 1: Mary Robinette Kowal. Mary Robinette was actually the first guest
Speaker 1: we ever had on the program for the episode to
Speaker 1: our Pets Lie to us, and I thought it'd be
Speaker 1: great to check in with her since she's the one
Speaker 1: who told us about the whole movement to teach pets
Speaker 1: to talk. She's taught both her cat and her dog
Speaker 1: to use a communication device, and so in this conversation,
Speaker 1: we'll finally find out what happens when a dog and
Speaker 1: a cat speak the same language.
Speaker 2: Joy.
Speaker 1: Hey, Mary Robinette, how are you. I'm good.
Speaker 2: Good to see you again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so great to hear from you again, my
Speaker 1: first guest ever. That's right, I feel so fancy And
Speaker 1: now you're back.
Speaker 2: I am happy to be back. You've done some pretty
Speaker 2: cool episodes so far about different animals that I've been
Speaker 2: excited to listen to.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what did you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the one about animal's perceptions of death. I was like,
Speaker 2: pretty cool and parts of kind of intense.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's been one of my favorite episodes to do. Well,
Speaker 1: it's great to catch up with you. The last time
Speaker 1: we talked, you asked this whether pets lie because you
Speaker 1: had taught your cat to talk through the system, and
Speaker 1: so I just wanted to learn a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the origins of this with you. So when did
Speaker 1: you first hear about this idea that you could maybe
Speaker 1: teach your cat to talk? Sure?
Speaker 2: So I was researching a novel. I wanted to look
Speaker 2: into animal language acquisition and trying to get a sense
Speaker 2: of what sort of vocabularies were plausible for an animal
Speaker 2: to have, And in doing so, I stumbled across a
Speaker 2: couple of different talking animal all accounts, one of which
Speaker 2: was Christina Hunger and I saw it and initially was
Speaker 2: very skeptical. But the more videos I watched, I started
Speaker 2: watching what about Bunny and There's a sheep a doodle
Speaker 2: and Billy speaks who was the first cat that was
Speaker 2: doing this? And realized, oh, it doesn't actually matter if
Speaker 2: it's a language, it is definitely communication.
Speaker 1: Okay, So give me some examples of communication moments would
Speaker 1: that have been significant or interesting?
Speaker 2: I'll tell you the first one that made me go, oh,
Speaker 2: this is the thing that's really happening. I think she
Speaker 2: had only like five buttons or so at this point,
Speaker 2: and she pressed open and I opened the door to
Speaker 2: the apartment and she said open, and like, Elsie, the
Speaker 2: door's open. Open, Open, Elsie, the door is open. And
Speaker 2: then she says open help, and I'm like, okay, well
Speaker 2: that's new. So I stood up and she walked away
Speaker 2: from the button board to the bedroom door, which was closed,
Speaker 2: and I opened the door and she be lined for
Speaker 2: her water and started drinking, and I thought, this is amazing.
Speaker 2: And then after she finished drinking the water, she walked
Speaker 2: back to the and she said open love you.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I don't know how to read that any other way
Speaker 2: than that she was thanking me with the tools that
Speaker 2: she had available.
Speaker 1: Wow. Can you please teach my teenage kids this fIF courtesy?
Speaker 2: Maybe just get your teenager some buttons?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that might be better. Yeah, you said you also
Speaker 1: had an example where you're like, what's going on? Right?
Speaker 2: So this is the one that I offer to people
Speaker 2: as this is why you should do this with your pets.
Speaker 2: So Elsie has a knee injury. We don't know what happened.
Speaker 2: She sits with her leg sticking out to the side,
Speaker 2: but the vets have checked it out and it's all
Speaker 2: been fine and doesn't seem to cause her any problems.
Speaker 2: And a couple of months ago, Elsie started saying various
Speaker 2: combinations of leg and ouch. And because the system logs
Speaker 2: her button presses automatically for me, I could see that
Speaker 2: leg was not a word that she used very often
Speaker 2: at all. She'd only used it two other times this year,
Speaker 2: and not with the word ouch. Like I've seen her
Speaker 2: say ouch and have a hair bowl or ouch when
Speaker 2: her feelings are hurt, but like an ouch that was
Speaker 2: new and so I feel a little alarmist. But I
Speaker 2: contact the vet and I'm like, she has no new symptoms,
Speaker 2: but she's saying this, so maybe she tweaked it. So
Speaker 2: I make an appointment. The vet does a physical examination,
Speaker 2: so she said, let's do imaging since she's reporting this,
Speaker 2: And the imaging turned up an ACL injury and severe
Speaker 2: arthritis WOOA, which we would not have spotted, so then
Speaker 2: it gets even more like bonkers. The vet gives us
Speaker 2: pain medication and I give it to Elsie that night,
Speaker 2: and about twenty minutes after that, she goes to her
Speaker 2: button board and she says thank you. And I had
Speaker 2: to give her the medicine for a couple of nights running,
Speaker 2: and every night after she got the medicine, she would
Speaker 2: go to the board and she would say thank you.
Speaker 2: So at this point Elsie now has the word medicine
Speaker 2: on the board and she would ask for medication about
Speaker 2: once a week. Wow, which meant that instead of having
Speaker 2: to medicate her every day, she was opting in to
Speaker 2: get medication on the days that her leg was bothering
Speaker 2: her more.
Speaker 1: As she's able to communicate it when she needed it.
Speaker 2: When she needs it, So being able to do as
Speaker 2: needed medication for an animal is a complete game changer.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, that's Mary Ruminant's cat Elsie. Now here's where
Speaker 1: I asked her what happened when she also taught her
Speaker 1: dog Guppy to dog using the buttons.
Speaker 2: So it's called augmentative interspecies communication, and mostly the inner
Speaker 2: species is human to animal, but there is some cross
Speaker 2: species animal communication. I have seen her and Guppy talk
Speaker 2: to each other with the buttons, and it doesn't happen often,
Speaker 2: but one of them will initiate play by spressing the button.
Speaker 1: Play meaning your cat, now talk to your dog via
Speaker 1: those buttons?
Speaker 2: Correct?
Speaker 1: Do you have a bun for? Like, uh, what's up? Dog?
Speaker 2: Kind of? Elsie has one hundred and thirty words, Guppy,
Speaker 2: who's a smart dog. It's just very simple girl. And
Speaker 2: so she's got eighteen words and basically thinks they all
Speaker 2: mean either friend or outside.
Speaker 1: She plaited kind of at eighteen words.
Speaker 2: She could go farther, but the things that she wants
Speaker 2: to communicate are just less complicated.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. Well, I'll ask you how you're processing all
Speaker 1: of this, but if you don't mind what happened with
Speaker 1: the companion animal here, I'm asking Mary Robinette about another
Speaker 1: cat he had called Helix.
Speaker 2: So Helix was sick for a very long time. I
Speaker 2: think he was probably sick from the moment he came
Speaker 2: to us. We only had him for about two years.
Speaker 2: He had good days and bad days, and we tried everything.
Speaker 2: So we had to have him put down, and it
Speaker 2: was a very very difficult decision. We didn't have Elsie watch,
Speaker 2: but we did bring her in after he was gone
Speaker 2: to talk about the fact that his ouch was all
Speaker 2: done and that he was dead. And so that night, Elsie,
Speaker 2: she was walking around the apartment. She smelled the spot
Speaker 2: where we had had him, and then she went over
Speaker 2: to his favorite chair, she smelled his bed, and then
Speaker 2: she went to the button board and she said concerned,
Speaker 2: and then she did the most plaintive mew and I
Speaker 2: was just it was it was heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Four months later, she was wandering around the apartment and
Speaker 2: just spontaneously, out of nowhere, she went to the board
Speaker 2: and said, let's go Helix play.
Speaker 1: Oh, like she was trying to call him.
Speaker 2: And so I don't remember the entire sequence, but I
Speaker 2: remember the one time when I was attempting to talk
Speaker 2: to her about the fact that he was gone. And
Speaker 2: after we talked, I had left the room, gone into
Speaker 2: the bedroom, and she goes over to her button board
Speaker 2: and says something like, I don't understand sad ouch, and
Speaker 2: I'm just like I saw the footage later and I
Speaker 2: just like, I'm just sobbing.
Speaker 1: On her own. She pressed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so like she continues to talk about him.
Speaker 2: He died in twenty twenty three, and she will occasionally
Speaker 2: still just bring him up critical. Yeah, it feels like
Speaker 2: I am in a fantasy novel or science fiction novel,
Speaker 2: like somehow I got the D and D talk to
Speaker 2: animals spell, I can do that now?
Speaker 1: Wow? Yeah, tell me more about that. This is way
Speaker 1: more than you were expecting.
Speaker 2: So much more so, Like I'm a science fiction writer, right,
Speaker 2: I am having conversations with a non human intelligence on
Speaker 2: a daily basis in my home. Oh and that's the
Speaker 2: other thing that I was not expecting. Across species, they
Speaker 2: will use whatever their word is, whatever button you've put
Speaker 2: down for excrement, the learners will use it as a
Speaker 2: curse word. No what And so you give her the
Speaker 2: word litter box and she will press that.
Speaker 1: That means poop, that means crap.
Speaker 2: It means this is some bullshit. Yeah from doom scrolling.
Speaker 2: You know, I get things like device all done? Oh really, litterbox?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, how did it feel to have your cat
Speaker 1: called bullshit on you?
Speaker 2: I mean, she's usually right on the side.
Speaker 1: She keeps you honest.
Speaker 2: She does keep me honest.
Speaker 1: So what have you learned about how CAD views the world?
Speaker 2: There's a word called umveldt, which is the lins through
Speaker 2: which someone experiences the world.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: And the idea is that every creature has a different
Speaker 2: kind linsseet than humans. Do you know, like the mantis
Speaker 2: from that have like all of these color ranges that
Speaker 2: we can't see. Cats, they can see the same colors
Speaker 2: that we can, but they have fifty times the synth
Speaker 2: receptors that we do. And so talking to her, watching
Speaker 2: the way she interacts the world with the things that
Speaker 2: are important to her are just completely different than the
Speaker 2: way I experience the world. I have so much more
Speaker 2: understanding and appreciation for the fact that she has an
Speaker 2: interior life.
Speaker 1: Amazing, well awesome. Thanks for sharing all these stories, Mary
Speaker 1: Roman It, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am extremely happy to I'm always happy to
Speaker 2: talk about my Dinna cat.
Speaker 1: Be here to t out the full episode on animal communication.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, See you next time you've been
Speaker 1: listening to science stuff. Production of iHeartRadio written and produced
Speaker 1: by me or Hm predited by Rose Seguda, executive producer
Speaker 1: Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Peckram And
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