#now please imagine all of their sleepy little mews and chirrups as they are waking up

[favouritefi]

So, we know catboys purr, as per a (lovely) previous post; do they also meow? or have other cat-like vocalisations? (same for dogboys)

If they do, do they ever do these in front of their owners, or are they strictly between each other?

((If the latter, do they prefer to communicate with each other in this way or do they usually just speak normally? Is it trained out of them?))

<3

ohhhhh very fun ask thank you for fun ask

vocalization is different from human language in that its innate/biological and not learned (sorry to the chomsky lovers but i disagree with him and his posse), so cat/dogpeople are born knowing how to vocalize. cat/dogkids vocalize the most, especially with their parents, and as they get older they vocalize less. i wouldnt say its trained out of them intentionally, but human language is more useful in daily life so they use human language more. if they go "feral" they will forget human language and only communicate with each other through body language and vocalizations. naturalists like goodsir have lots of theories about this but linguistics as a science hasn't been invented yet so thankfully there hasnt been any unethical experimentation on "feral" cat/dogpeople (yet).

because there isn't any social stigma against vocalizing, they do it in front of each other and also humans, it's usually unintentional though. like a stressed dogboy might growl and a scared catboy might hiss but its an instinctive reaction to stimuli and not like a finely crafted performance to convey a message, unless you're hickey because his whole life is a performance. like you arent supposed to be able to control your purrs, if you could then little wouldve saved himself a lot of embarrassment during certain wardroom officer meetings, but hickeys a little freak whose really good at faking them to seem harmless/happy even when he's not. the fact goodsir can tell hickey's being disingenuous is a testament to goodsir's professional skills and his ability to see through hickey's shenanigans.