Many of us can’t resist using baby talk on our cats. Is there a reason we do this?

Or are we just being silly?

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As discussed in this Psychology Today article, we seem to have an instinct for speaking to infants in ways they will respond to:

Baby talk in all languages is higher in pitch (perceived sound frequency) than adult-directed speech, and babies are especially attentive to high pitches. Baby talk also has a very predictable and pronounced rhythm which catches babies’ attention. And, baby talk is accompanied by adult eye contact and gaze movement, by exaggerated facial expressions, by rhythmic movement and gesture– by a whole panoply of stimuli, all linked to each other and all of great interest to human infants.

So, baby talk works for babies; that’s not much of a stretch. Why do we do it to cats?

It’s the same impulse. And, oddly enough, it’s for the same reasons.

Presumably, babies could learn their language’s phonemes by listening to adult-directed speech as well as by listening to baby talk. The thing is, they are not very interested in adult-directed speech … [this speech] is lower-pitched than babies like. It is not very rhythmic or repetitious … when adults talk to other adults, they do not use the emphatic eye movements, facial expressions, and gestures that are linked with [baby talk]. Bo-ring, the babies say, and they stop paying attention…

We talk to babies, and pets, in ways they will respond to. We get more feedback with higher pitches, expressive faces and gestures, and repetition. So, that’s what we do.

Cats “read” us when we send out clues. Babies don’t get much from adult-directed speech, as the article calls it. This is speech without extra emphasis, expression, or gesture. Almost all of its meaning lies in the word definitions themselves.

While pets and babies can learn important words, the greater dimensions elude them. Babies will grow to understand a much larger vocabulary, along with sentence structure, and even other languages.

We can’t expect as much from our cats, but we can help their understanding along. We don’t exactly speak their language, but we can speak our language in a way they can grasp. There’s one other purpose of baby talk; it conveys our love.

There’s something about such gushy, silly, loving talk that puts sweet tones in our voice and leads to us saying things we really mean.

So baby talk does have a purpose; it is cuteness, and it is cunning.

And it shows we’re not cracked.

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