Thread: Linguistic abilities of Maincoons

Ours know their own names, the names of the others, kitty (the cat living on our porch), a few food words, buggie, birdie, coonie, squirrel, outside, garage, etc. The MC mix we took in a number of years back (but is now gone from HCM) was particularly good with words. He actually knew the names of a number of the dogs and cats in the neighborhood. When he and I were out walking at night, if he could see/hear somebody walking their dog and I knew who it was, I could get him to relax by telling him which dog was coming. All you had to do was say "licorice" (a neighborhood cat he wanted to fight with) and he would get into attack mode and start looking around. I felt he learned words as easily as our Maltese dogs. Incidentally, his main food word was "feast," because he loved Fancy Feast when we started feeding it to him.