Domestic Cat Silent Meow

Cat Opens Mouth But No Sound

Your cat companion may well do it: the silent meow.  Your cat opens her mouth but no sound comes out of it.  When I visited Helmi Flick and her husband in Fort Worth, Dallas, Texas I met, for the first time her two British Shorthair cats and also for the first time I saw the silent meow in action a lot of the time because the British Shorthair is well-known for the silent meow.

Sometimes you'll hear the faintest of noises emanating from the mouth. I have found a video of it on YouTube.

It's completely normal but when you first see it it looks a bit abnormal.  You might even think something is wrong but no.  It is said that the adult domestic cat only meows at us - people, but never with another cat.  I'm not sure that is a strictly true behaviour pattern but it might be.

Assuming that it is correct then I wonder whether the silent meow is only ever directed at people.  If it is then it is a learned behaviour from thousands of years of living with people.  I wonder how they learnt it ;). It seems that some individual domestic cats realise that they can communicate with us without making a sound and they are correct.