You're listening to 20,000 Hertz.

I'm Dallas Taylor.

As humans, we love our cats.

Nearly 43 million households in the U.S. alone have a pet cat.

And there are about 350 million pet cats around the world.

But just because we love them, that doesn't always mean that we understand them.

Cats can be very vocal creatures. But the exact meaning and intention behind these sounds can often be hard to read.

The thing is, as much as we love our cats, they don't always seem to reciprocate.

Certainly not the way dogs do.

That's 20,000 Hertz producer, Layla Bateson.

They've got a bit of a reputation for being aloof, standoffish, or at least fiercely independent.

They're not innately sociable.

That's Dr. Sarah Brown. Some of them are better at it than others, I think to say the least.

Sarah has been researching cat behaviour for over 30 years

and is the author of a book called The Hidden Language of Cats.

She says the key to understanding your cat is to walk a mile in their paws.

Cats come from a solitary ancestor, unlike dogs,

which had a pre-formed set of social signals inherited from their wolf ancestors.

With cats, their behaviours a little bit more subtle and a bit harder to read sometimes.

In fact, us humans are totally oblivious to most of the communication going on between them.

Cats go-to way of communicating is by a cent.

They would leave a scent for another wild cat to pick up later and keep their distance from each other.

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