The Cat Returns

Yesterday morning, when I went to prepare breakfast, there was no sign of the cat that had been meowing at my window. There were plenty of rabbits in sight on the lawn, so I figured the feline had gone, for they would not be out cavorting in plain sight with a predator around.

It was cloudy most of the morning. In the afternoon, I went for my usual walk. I saw a rabbit by the fence.

I noticed hickory nuts maturing.

In the pasture, I admired the smooth sumac.

Then I saw a deer in the distance.

I wanted to get closer for a better view, but as soon as it spotted me, the deer ran away.

 In the late afternoon it rained, and Bow reacted with his usual display, answering every thunderclap with a vocalization.

I have long since given up asking Bow why he does this. Other chimpanzees do it, too. It's instinctive. There may be variations in their display, but they will display at the rain, and they don't know why. It's the same thing with humans. If you ask a human why he does something that is hard-wired, he won't be able to give you an articulate, intelligent answer, either. It used to drive me crazy when people could not explain themselves, and one of the things I hoped talking to a chimpanzee would help me with is clearing up some of those misunderstandings. But it turned out that Bow is not more capable of introspection than most of the humans I know.  Living with him has made me more tolerant of my own kind.

All of us have things we do that we can't help doing, and just because we come with those pre-wired behaviors, it does not mean that we don't have other actions that we perform consciously and by choice, things that we are capable of explaining to others. The difficulty, sometimes, is in determining what it is that someone else can't help doing, so that we don't waste time trying to change the unchangeable.  We have to learn not to say: "You're so smart. Why can't you just stop doing X." If X is hard-wired, there is no point even trying.

Everyone would benefit greatly from living with a chimpanzee twenty-four hours a day. There is so much to learn about our own nature from having to put up with theirs. And their generosity of spirit, when we don't judge them, more than makes up for a little inconvenience.

After the rain display was over, when it was time for dinner, Bow was perfectly capable of telling me what he wanted to eat by spelling out the words. The food calls when he saw the food coming were not for me, or for himself. They were pre-wired to give away the fact that there is food to any chimp within earshot, whether Bow wants to share or not.  But there were no chimps within earshot, only deer and rabbits and stray cats.

When dealing with humans, too, it is helpful to mute out the language they use if you want to rely on their tells. The articulated, spelled-out language performs one function, and the body language and unintentional vocalizations quite another.

In the evening, long after I had put Bow to bed, as I was tidying things up for the last time in the kitchen before turning out the lights, the cat returned. It appeared at the kitchen window. My daughter went out and got this picture of it.

Is the cat here to stay? Or is it just passing through? Only time will tell.

Raising a Happy Noise: Not Necessarily Intentional Communication

Everybody knows about chimpanzee vocalizations. The experts have classified them, numbered them, named them, and they can assure you that they are "not language." And because they have not been seen to have the abstract levels of encoding that we expect in language, the experts have concluded that chimpanzees don't "have language", as if language were a possession that one can carry around and display to others and own.

Bow "has language", in the sense that he can spell in Hebrew and English. He also "has language" in the sense that when I say something like "pick that up and throw it away", he knows what I mean. (Whether he'll do as I ask is a whole other question.) I mean, "having language" is not only producing an utterance. It is also decoding the utterance made by another. In all these senses, Bow "has language."

But Bow is also a chimpanzee. And sometimes he has to raise a happy noise. Or an aggressive noise. Or to express his feelings directly. Not every sound a human makes is language, either. Sometimes we laugh. Sometimes we cry. Sometimes we sneeze. Bow vocalizes. And his vocalizations tend to have the plot structure of a sneeze.

Not every sound we make is entirely voluntary. Cries of fear or joy often aren't. A sneeze, on the other hand, is something we may allow to happen or not quite pull off. So it is with Bow's vocalizations. Sometimes he starts but clearly does not finish. Sometimes the vocalization runs its course, and then he seems relieved and happy.

There is a difference between intentional communication and unintentional signals. Bow exemplifies that difference. He is not trying to tell anyone anything when he vocalizes like this. But this does not mean that we don't learn something about how he is feeling, if we listen.