This is Mischa’s ‘do not disturb – I’m quite comfortable thank you‘ expression. She has a large variety of other ways of communicating with us. Cats are creatures with excellent diversity of expression, some of it is subtle ‘why doesn’t she know I want sardines and not tuna’ and it’s only be being very observant that we can learn ‘cat talk’.
‘I really don’t want you to come any nearer’ – this young lady intends to be left alone. A smiley cat who is saying hello will blink her eyes at you. If you blink back she’ll appear to acknowledge it – ‘hey, this human can communicate after all’ although other people might think you’ve gone mad! It’s thought that cats use nine clearly recognisable facial expressions. I think it’s quite a lot more.
They range from ‘who are you?’ to ‘you’re dead meat if you touch me’ and on to ‘that was nice’ or ‘more please’ and the most common communication ‘pleeze feed me’. Then there is the body language and cats are even more expressive and adept at this. Cats talk to us all the time – we just have to be observant enough to understand what they are saying.