Have you ever listened to your cat meow and thought, "I'd know that voice anywhere"? What if we told you that you've been listening to the wrong sound all along?
Welcome to FreeAstroScience.com, where we break down complex scientific findings into words that feel like a conversation between friends. We're Gerd Dani and the FreeAstroScience team—a science and cultural group that believes knowledge belongs to everyone. Today is February 17, 2026: Italy's National Cat Day (Festa del Gatto), and we can't think of a better way to celebrate than by sharing a remarkable discovery about the animals who've shared our homes for thousands of years.
A brand-new study published in Scientific Reports has flipped our understanding of cat communication on its head. Researchers found that purrs—not meows—carry the true acoustic fingerprint of each individual cat. The meow? It's more of a flexible tool cats shaped specifically to talk to us. Stick with us to the end. Whether you're a cat lover, a science enthusiast, or simply someone curious about the world around you, this one's for you.
Table of Contents
Why Does Italy Celebrate Cats on February 17?
Before we get into the science, let's talk about why today matters.
Italy's National Cat Day (Festa del Gatto) was born in 1990. Journalist Claudia Angeletti ran a reader poll in Tuttogatto magazine, and a woman named Oriella Del Col won with a beautifully layered proposal.
Here's her reasoning—and it's quite charming:
- February falls under the zodiac sign of Aquarius: free spirits, nonconformists. Sound like any animal you know?
- Italian folk tradition calls February "the month of cats and witches," tying felines to mystery and magic.
- The number 17 has long been considered unlucky in Italy—much like the black cat in old superstitions.
- In Roman numerals, 17 is XVII. Rearranged? VIXI—Latin for "I have lived," meaning "I am dead." But a cat? A cat can say "I have lived" and still have six more lives to go.
- So 17 becomes "1 life × 7 times."
Different countries celebrate on different dates. Japan picks February 22 (since 1987). The United States chose October 29 (since 2005). Russia goes with March 1 (since 2005). And the International Cat Day falls on August 8. But today—February 17—belongs to Italy and Poland.
Now, with that celebration in mind, let's look at what a fresh piece of research tells us about these creatures we love so much.
What Did the 2025 Study Actually Discover?
A team of researchers from the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin and the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II set out to answer a simple but fascinating question: Can we tell individual cats apart by the sounds they make?
Led by Danilo Russo, Anja Birgit Schild, and Mirjam Knörnschild, the team recorded vocalisations from 27 domestic cats across twelve private households and two animal shelters in Berlin during 2020 and 2021 .
They collected two types of sounds:
- 276 meows from 14 cats (recorded during food anticipation or when cats wanted attention)
- 557 purrs from 21 cats (recorded during petting sessions)
Using **mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs)**—the same mathematical technique used for human voice recognition—they ran the sounds through discriminant function analyses. Think of it like asking a computer: "Can you figure out which cat this is, just from the sound?"
The answer surprised everyone. Including the researchers themselves.
The Key Numbers
Data source: Russo, Schild & Knörnschild (2025), Scientific Reports 15:43490
Let that sink in. A computer trained on purrs correctly identified individual cats 85.5% of the time. With meows? Only 64.4% . Both figures beat random chance by a wide margin, but the gap between them is striking.
Why Are Purrs the Real Vocal Fingerprint?
This is where it gets really interesting—and a little counterintuitive.
We tend to think of meows as the more "communicative" sound. They vary in pitch, length, and melody. They change depending on whether your cat wants dinner, wants to play, or just wants you to open a door . That flexibility is precisely why meows are worse at encoding identity.
Purrs, on the other hand, are remarkably stable. Every cat vibrates at its own specific frequency and with a consistent rhythm . The fundamental frequency of purring sits between 25 and 30 Hz—far lower than most vocalisations—and the sound can last from under a second to several minutes .
The Mathematics of Identity
The researchers used the stereotypy index HS (developed by Beecher in 1989) to quantify how much individual information each sound type carries. Here's the formula :
Stereotypy Index (Beecher, 1989):
HS = log2 √((F + n − 1) / n)
Where F = F-statistic from MANOVA, n = mean number of calls per individual (14.7).
The total HS is summed across all 10 MFCC parameters.
The number of distinguishable individuals = 2HS
In plain language: purrs carry enough acoustic information to distinguish among roughly 22 individuals (24.47 = 22.23), while meows can only tell apart about 6 (22.65 = 6.26) .
Why such a difference? The researchers suggest it comes down to anatomy. Recent studies show that a cat's larynx can produce purring frequencies without any active neural input—meaning the purr is largely shaped by the physical structure of the vocal tract itself . Each cat's throat is slightly different, just like each human's. Those anatomical differences stamp each purr with an acoustic signature as unique as a fingerprint.
Meows, by contrast, are actively modulated. Cats adjust them on the fly—changing tone, duration, and intensity to get what they want from us. That very adaptability blurs the individual signal .
As the Focus.it team put it beautifully: *"Le fusa sono… solo fusa"*—purrs are just purrs. And that simplicity is their strength .
How Has Domestication Reshaped the Meow?
Here's where the story takes an evolutionary turn.
Wild cats barely meow at all. When they do, it's mostly during territorial disputes or mating season . Domestic cats, on the other hand, have turned the meow into a whole language—one designed almost entirely for communicating with us.
Think about that for a moment. Over thousands of years of living alongside humans, cats didn't just tolerate us. They evolved a vocal tool to talk to us .
The researchers describe this as a product of ontogenetic ritualisation—a fancy term for what's actually a beautiful process. Through repeated daily interactions, each cat-owner pair gradually shapes the meow together. Your cat learns which sounds get the fastest response from you, and you learn to interpret your cat's specific vocabulary .
This means every cat-human relationship creates its own little dialect. The meow your cat uses when she's hungry at 6 AM isn't random. She's been fine-tuning it based on your reactions for years.
The Focus.it article called meows *"arma di manipolazione di massa"*—a weapon of mass manipulation . They're not wrong. Cats are extraordinarily good at training us.
Domestic Cats vs. Wild Cats: What Do Their Meows Tell Us?
To test whether domestication really changed cat vocalisations, the research team compared domestic cat meows with those of five wild cat species: the African wildcat (Felis lybica), the European wildcat (Felis silvestris), the jungle cat (Felis chaus), the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus), and the cougar (Puma concolor) .
They pulled 185 wild cat meows from the Animal Sound Archive at Berlin's Museum für Naturkunde and compared them with 63 domestic cat meows.
The results were decisive.
The computer classified 87.1% of meows to the correct species—well above the 16.7% chance level. But the real revelation was about variability within each species.
Domestic cats showed far greater acoustic dispersion in their meows than any of the five wild species (ANOVA: F₅ = 15.294, p < 0.0001) . In everyday terms: wild cat meows are predictable and uniform. Domestic cat meows are all over the map.
This makes perfect sense when you consider that wild cats don't need meows to communicate with humans. They keep their vocalisations tight and stereotyped. Domestic cats, by contrast, have been under selective pressure to diversify their meows—because the cats with the most expressive, varied, human-pleasing meows got the best care, the most food, and the warmest laps .
Research has even shown that humans find domestic cat meows more pleasant than wild cat meows. Domestication didn't just change how cats sound. It changed how cats sound to us .
What Does This Mean for You and Your Cat?
So where does all of this leave us—ordinary cat owners who thought we knew our cats' voices?
A few takeaways worth sitting with:
1. Your cat's purr is its truest voice. That low rumble you feel against your chest when your cat curls up on you? It's as unique as a human fingerprint. No other cat on Earth purrs exactly the same way .
2. Meows are a conversation, not a fixed signal. Your cat's meow evolved for you. It's a living, changing communication tool shaped by every interaction you've had together. The meow your cat used five years ago probably isn't the same one she uses today .
3. Cats are still evolving alongside us. The differences between domestic and wild cat vocalisations aren't just cultural—they're biological. Emerging research connects changes in vocalisations to neural crest cell development, suggesting that domestication may have altered the physical structure of the cat larynx itself .
4. We're not just pet owners. We're co-authors of a shared language. Every time you respond to your cat's meow, you're both writing the next line of a vocal dialogue that no other cat-human pair shares. That's not just sweet—it's science.
And here's something that touches me personally. As someone who experiences the world from a wheelchair, I know what it means to communicate in ways others might not expect. Cats remind us that communication isn't always about volume or variety. Sometimes the quietest, steadiest signal—the purr—carries the deepest truth.
Final Thoughts
On this National Cat Day, we've learned something quietly profound. The meow—that sound we all associate most strongly with our cats—is actually the least reliable way to identify them. It's flexible, context-dependent, and shaped by the unique bond between each cat and its human companion.
The purr, by contrast, is stable, consistent, and deeply tied to the individual anatomy of each animal. With an information content of 4.47 bits, purrs can distinguish among 22 different individuals. Meows manage only about 6 .
Domestication didn't just tame cats. It expanded their vocal range, giving them a toolkit of meows far more varied than anything seen in wild felids . Cats reshaped their voices to reach us. And we've been listening—even when we didn't realize what we were hearing.
As we celebrate Italy's Festa del Gatto today—a tradition that's been going strong since 1990—let's take a moment to appreciate these extraordinary companions. They haven't just adapted to our world. They've found ways to speak it.
This article was written by Gerd Dani for FreeAstroScience.com, where we explain complex scientific principles in simple, human terms. We believe that knowledge is for everyone—regardless of background, ability, or circumstance.
At FreeAstroScience, we don't just share science. We share a conviction: never turn off your mind. Keep it active, always. Because as Goya warned us centuries ago, the sleep of reason breeds monsters.
Come back soon. There's always more to discover.
Study reference: Russo, D., Schild, A. B. & Knörnschild, M. "Meows encode less individual information than purrs and show greater variability in domestic than in wild cats." Scientific Reports 15, 43490 (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-31536-7
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