December 12, 2025 • 10 mins
Jorge catches up with science fiction author Mary Robinette Kowal to learn what her cat and dog have to say.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
Hoore Cham and in this short bonus episode, we're answering
the question can a cat talk to a dog? This
is a companion piece to our recent full episode about
animal communication. If you haven't listened to that one, be
sure to check it out. But in this mini episode,
(00:22):
I catch up to my friend and science fiction author
Mary Robinette Kowal. Mary Robinette was actually the first guest
we ever had on the program for the episode to
our Pets Lie to us, and I thought it'd be
great to check in with her since she's the one
who told us about the whole movement to teach pets
to talk. She's taught both her cat and her dog
to use a communication device, and so in this conversation,
(00:46):
we'll finally find out what happens when a dog and
a cat speak the same language.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Joy.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Hey, Mary Robinette, how are you. I'm good.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Good to see you again.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, it's so great to hear from you again, my
first guest ever. That's right, I feel so fancy And
now you're back.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I am happy to be back. You've done some pretty
cool episodes so far about different animals that I've been
excited to listen to.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Oh yeah, what did you think?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, the one about animal's perceptions of death. I was like,
pretty cool and parts of kind of intense.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yes, that's been one of my favorite episodes to do. Well,
it's great to catch up with you. The last time
we talked, you asked this whether pets lie because you
had taught your cat to talk through the system, and
so I just wanted to learn a little bit more
about the origins of this with you. So when did
you first hear about this idea that you could maybe
teach your cat to talk? Sure?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So I was researching a novel. I wanted to look
into animal language acquisition and trying to get a sense
of what sort of vocabularies were plausible for an animal
to have, And in doing so, I stumbled across a
couple of different talking animal all accounts, one of which
was Christina Hunger and I saw it and initially was
very skeptical. But the more videos I watched, I started
(02:09):
watching what about Bunny and There's a sheep a doodle
and Billy speaks who was the first cat that was
doing this? And realized, oh, it doesn't actually matter if
it's a language, it is definitely communication.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Okay, So give me some examples of communication moments would
that have been significant or interesting?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I'll tell you the first one that made me go, oh,
this is the thing that's really happening. I think she
had only like five buttons or so at this point,
and she pressed open and I opened the door to
the apartment and she said open, and like, Elsie, the
door's open. Open, Open, Elsie, the door is open. And
then she says open help, and I'm like, okay, well
that's new. So I stood up and she walked away
(02:48):
from the button board to the bedroom door, which was closed,
and I opened the door and she be lined for
her water and started drinking, and I thought, this is amazing.
And then after she finished drinking the water, she walked
back to the and she said open love you.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
What?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I don't know how to read that any other way
than that she was thanking me with the tools that
she had available.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Wow. Can you please teach my teenage kids this fIF courtesy?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Maybe just get your teenager some buttons?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah, that might be better. Yeah, you said you also
had an example where you're like, what's going on? Right?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So this is the one that I offer to people
as this is why you should do this with your pets.
So Elsie has a knee injury. We don't know what happened.
She sits with her leg sticking out to the side,
but the vets have checked it out and it's all
been fine and doesn't seem to cause her any problems.
And a couple of months ago, Elsie started saying various
combinations of leg and ouch. And because the system logs
(03:49):
her button presses automatically for me, I could see that
leg was not a word that she used very often
at all. She'd only used it two other times this year,
and not with the word ouch. Like I've seen her
say ouch and have a hair bowl or ouch when
her feelings are hurt, but like an ouch that was
new and so I feel a little alarmist. But I
contact the vet and I'm like, she has no new symptoms,
(04:11):
but she's saying this, so maybe she tweaked it. So
I make an appointment. The vet does a physical examination,
so she said, let's do imaging since she's reporting this,
And the imaging turned up an ACL injury and severe
arthritis WOOA, which we would not have spotted, so then
it gets even more like bonkers. The vet gives us
(04:32):
pain medication and I give it to Elsie that night,
and about twenty minutes after that, she goes to her
button board and she says thank you. And I had
to give her the medicine for a couple of nights running,
and every night after she got the medicine, she would
go to the board and she would say thank you.
So at this point Elsie now has the word medicine
(04:53):
on the board and she would ask for medication about
once a week. Wow, which meant that instead of having
to medicate her every day, she was opting in to
get medication on the days that her leg was bothering
her more.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
As she's able to communicate it when she needed it.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
When she needs it, So being able to do as
needed medication for an animal is a complete game changer.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah. Okay, that's Mary Ruminant's cat Elsie. Now here's where
I asked her what happened when she also taught her
dog Guppy to dog using the buttons.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
So it's called augmentative interspecies communication, and mostly the inner
species is human to animal, but there is some cross
species animal communication. I have seen her and Guppy talk
to each other with the buttons, and it doesn't happen often,
but one of them will initiate play by spressing the button.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Play meaning your cat, now talk to your dog via
those buttons?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Correct?
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Do you have a bun for? Like, uh, what's up? Dog?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Kind of? Elsie has one hundred and thirty words, Guppy,
who's a smart dog. It's just very simple girl. And
so she's got eighteen words and basically thinks they all
mean either friend or outside.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
She plaited kind of at eighteen words.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
She could go farther, but the things that she wants
to communicate are just less complicated.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
That's incredible. Well, I'll ask you how you're processing all
of this, but if you don't mind what happened with
the companion animal here, I'm asking Mary Robinette about another
cat he had called Helix.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
So Helix was sick for a very long time. I
think he was probably sick from the moment he came
to us. We only had him for about two years.
He had good days and bad days, and we tried everything.
So we had to have him put down, and it
was a very very difficult decision. We didn't have Elsie watch,
but we did bring her in after he was gone
(06:47):
to talk about the fact that his ouch was all
done and that he was dead. And so that night, Elsie,
she was walking around the apartment. She smelled the spot
where we had had him, and then she went over
to his favorite chair, she smelled his bed, and then
she went to the button board and she said concerned,
and then she did the most plaintive mew and I
(07:10):
was just it was it was heartbreaking.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Four months later, she was wandering around the apartment and
just spontaneously, out of nowhere, she went to the board
and said, let's go Helix play.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Oh, like she was trying to call him.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And so I don't remember the entire sequence, but I
remember the one time when I was attempting to talk
to her about the fact that he was gone. And
after we talked, I had left the room, gone into
the bedroom, and she goes over to her button board
and says something like, I don't understand sad ouch, and
I'm just like I saw the footage later and I
just like, I'm just sobbing.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
On her own. She pressed it.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, and so like she continues to talk about him.
He died in twenty twenty three, and she will occasionally
still just bring him up critical. Yeah, it feels like
I am in a fantasy novel or science fiction novel,
like somehow I got the D and D talk to
animals spell, I can do that now?
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Wow? Yeah, tell me more about that. This is way
more than you were expecting.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So much more so, Like I'm a science fiction writer, right,
I am having conversations with a non human intelligence on
a daily basis in my home. Oh and that's the
other thing that I was not expecting. Across species, they
will use whatever their word is, whatever button you've put
down for excrement, the learners will use it as a
(08:34):
curse word. No what And so you give her the
word litter box and she will press that.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
That means poop, that means crap.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
It means this is some bullshit. Yeah from doom scrolling.
You know, I get things like device all done? Oh really, litterbox?
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah? Well, how did it feel to have your cat
called bullshit on you?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I mean, she's usually right on the side.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
She keeps you honest.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
She does keep me honest.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
So what have you learned about how CAD views the world?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
There's a word called umveldt, which is the lins through
which someone experiences the world.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
And the idea is that every creature has a different
kind linsseet than humans. Do you know, like the mantis
from that have like all of these color ranges that
we can't see. Cats, they can see the same colors
that we can, but they have fifty times the synth
receptors that we do. And so talking to her, watching
(09:33):
the way she interacts the world with the things that
are important to her are just completely different than the
way I experience the world. I have so much more
understanding and appreciation for the fact that she has an
interior life.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Amazing, well awesome. Thanks for sharing all these stories, Mary
Roman It, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, I am extremely happy to I'm always happy to
talk about my Dinna cat.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Be here to t out the full episode on animal communication.
Thanks for joining us, See you next time you've been
listening to science stuff. Production of iHeartRadio written and produced
by me or Hm predited by Rose Seguda, executive producer
(10:19):
Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Peckram And
you can follow me on social media to search for
PhD comics and the name of your favorite platform. Be
sure to subscribe to sign stuff on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and please
tell your friends we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.
Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
Hoore Cham and in this short bonus episode, we're answering
the question can a cat talk to a dog? This
is a companion piece to our recent full episode about
animal communication. If you haven't listened to that one, be
sure to check it out. But in this mini episode,
(00:22):
I catch up to my friend and science fiction author
Mary Robinette Kowal. Mary Robinette was actually the first guest
we ever had on the program for the episode to
our Pets Lie to us, and I thought it'd be
great to check in with her since she's the one
who told us about the whole movement to teach pets
to talk. She's taught both her cat and her dog
to use a communication device, and so in this conversation,
(00:46):
we'll finally find out what happens when a dog and
a cat speak the same language.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Joy.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Hey, Mary Robinette, how are you. I'm good.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Good to see you again.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, it's so great to hear from you again, my
first guest ever. That's right, I feel so fancy And
now you're back.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I am happy to be back. You've done some pretty
cool episodes so far about different animals that I've been
excited to listen to.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Oh yeah, what did you think?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, the one about animal's perceptions of death. I was like,
pretty cool and parts of kind of intense.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yes, that's been one of my favorite episodes to do. Well,
it's great to catch up with you. The last time
we talked, you asked this whether pets lie because you
had taught your cat to talk through the system, and
so I just wanted to learn a little bit more
about the origins of this with you. So when did
you first hear about this idea that you could maybe
teach your cat to talk? Sure?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
So I was researching a novel. I wanted to look
into animal language acquisition and trying to get a sense
of what sort of vocabularies were plausible for an animal
to have, And in doing so, I stumbled across a
couple of different talking animal all accounts, one of which
was Christina Hunger and I saw it and initially was
very skeptical. But the more videos I watched, I started
(02:09):
watching what about Bunny and There's a sheep a doodle
and Billy speaks who was the first cat that was
doing this? And realized, oh, it doesn't actually matter if
it's a language, it is definitely communication.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Okay, So give me some examples of communication moments would
that have been significant or interesting?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I'll tell you the first one that made me go, oh,
this is the thing that's really happening. I think she
had only like five buttons or so at this point,
and she pressed open and I opened the door to
the apartment and she said open, and like, Elsie, the
door's open. Open, Open, Elsie, the door is open. And
then she says open help, and I'm like, okay, well
that's new. So I stood up and she walked away
(02:48):
from the button board to the bedroom door, which was closed,
and I opened the door and she be lined for
her water and started drinking, and I thought, this is amazing.
And then after she finished drinking the water, she walked
back to the and she said open love you.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
What?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
I don't know how to read that any other way
than that she was thanking me with the tools that
she had available.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Wow. Can you please teach my teenage kids this fIF courtesy?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Maybe just get your teenager some buttons?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah, that might be better. Yeah, you said you also
had an example where you're like, what's going on? Right?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So this is the one that I offer to people
as this is why you should do this with your pets.
So Elsie has a knee injury. We don't know what happened.
She sits with her leg sticking out to the side,
but the vets have checked it out and it's all
been fine and doesn't seem to cause her any problems.
And a couple of months ago, Elsie started saying various
combinations of leg and ouch. And because the system logs
(03:49):
her button presses automatically for me, I could see that
leg was not a word that she used very often
at all. She'd only used it two other times this year,
and not with the word ouch. Like I've seen her
say ouch and have a hair bowl or ouch when
her feelings are hurt, but like an ouch that was
new and so I feel a little alarmist. But I
contact the vet and I'm like, she has no new symptoms,
(04:11):
but she's saying this, so maybe she tweaked it. So
I make an appointment. The vet does a physical examination,
so she said, let's do imaging since she's reporting this,
And the imaging turned up an ACL injury and severe
arthritis WOOA, which we would not have spotted, so then
it gets even more like bonkers. The vet gives us
(04:32):
pain medication and I give it to Elsie that night,
and about twenty minutes after that, she goes to her
button board and she says thank you. And I had
to give her the medicine for a couple of nights running,
and every night after she got the medicine, she would
go to the board and she would say thank you.
So at this point Elsie now has the word medicine
(04:53):
on the board and she would ask for medication about
once a week. Wow, which meant that instead of having
to medicate her every day, she was opting in to
get medication on the days that her leg was bothering
her more.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
As she's able to communicate it when she needed it.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
When she needs it, So being able to do as
needed medication for an animal is a complete game changer.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah. Okay, that's Mary Ruminant's cat Elsie. Now here's where
I asked her what happened when she also taught her
dog Guppy to dog using the buttons.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
So it's called augmentative interspecies communication, and mostly the inner
species is human to animal, but there is some cross
species animal communication. I have seen her and Guppy talk
to each other with the buttons, and it doesn't happen often,
but one of them will initiate play by spressing the button.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Play meaning your cat, now talk to your dog via
those buttons?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Correct?
Speaker 1 (05:52):
Do you have a bun for? Like, uh, what's up? Dog?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Kind of? Elsie has one hundred and thirty words, Guppy,
who's a smart dog. It's just very simple girl. And
so she's got eighteen words and basically thinks they all
mean either friend or outside.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
She plaited kind of at eighteen words.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
She could go farther, but the things that she wants
to communicate are just less complicated.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
That's incredible. Well, I'll ask you how you're processing all
of this, but if you don't mind what happened with
the companion animal here, I'm asking Mary Robinette about another
cat he had called Helix.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
So Helix was sick for a very long time. I
think he was probably sick from the moment he came
to us. We only had him for about two years.
He had good days and bad days, and we tried everything.
So we had to have him put down, and it
was a very very difficult decision. We didn't have Elsie watch,
but we did bring her in after he was gone
(06:47):
to talk about the fact that his ouch was all
done and that he was dead. And so that night, Elsie,
she was walking around the apartment. She smelled the spot
where we had had him, and then she went over
to his favorite chair, she smelled his bed, and then
she went to the button board and she said concerned,
and then she did the most plaintive mew and I
(07:10):
was just it was it was heartbreaking.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Four months later, she was wandering around the apartment and
just spontaneously, out of nowhere, she went to the board
and said, let's go Helix play.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Oh, like she was trying to call him.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And so I don't remember the entire sequence, but I
remember the one time when I was attempting to talk
to her about the fact that he was gone. And
after we talked, I had left the room, gone into
the bedroom, and she goes over to her button board
and says something like, I don't understand sad ouch, and
I'm just like I saw the footage later and I
just like, I'm just sobbing.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
On her own. She pressed it.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, and so like she continues to talk about him.
He died in twenty twenty three, and she will occasionally
still just bring him up critical. Yeah, it feels like
I am in a fantasy novel or science fiction novel,
like somehow I got the D and D talk to
animals spell, I can do that now?
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Wow? Yeah, tell me more about that. This is way
more than you were expecting.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So much more so, Like I'm a science fiction writer, right,
I am having conversations with a non human intelligence on
a daily basis in my home. Oh and that's the
other thing that I was not expecting. Across species, they
will use whatever their word is, whatever button you've put
down for excrement, the learners will use it as a
(08:34):
curse word. No what And so you give her the
word litter box and she will press that.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
That means poop, that means crap.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
It means this is some bullshit. Yeah from doom scrolling.
You know, I get things like device all done? Oh really, litterbox?
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yeah? Well, how did it feel to have your cat
called bullshit on you?
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I mean, she's usually right on the side.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
She keeps you honest.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
She does keep me honest.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
So what have you learned about how CAD views the world?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
There's a word called umveldt, which is the lins through
which someone experiences the world.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
And the idea is that every creature has a different
kind linsseet than humans. Do you know, like the mantis
from that have like all of these color ranges that
we can't see. Cats, they can see the same colors
that we can, but they have fifty times the synth
receptors that we do. And so talking to her, watching
(09:33):
the way she interacts the world with the things that
are important to her are just completely different than the
way I experience the world. I have so much more
understanding and appreciation for the fact that she has an
interior life.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Amazing, well awesome. Thanks for sharing all these stories, Mary
Roman It, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah, I am extremely happy to I'm always happy to
talk about my Dinna cat.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Be here to t out the full episode on animal communication.
Thanks for joining us, See you next time you've been
listening to science stuff. Production of iHeartRadio written and produced
by me or Hm predited by Rose Seguda, executive producer
(10:19):
Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Peckram And
you can follow me on social media to search for
PhD comics and the name of your favorite platform. Be
sure to subscribe to sign stuff on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and please
tell your friends we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal: Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a brand new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack. And make sure to check out Seasons 1-4 of Betrayal, along with Betrayal Weekly Season 1.