MEOWSIC
easy website builder

MATING CALLS
(AND OTHER SOUNDS BY CATS IN THE MATING SEASON)

Mating calls (or mating cries) are usually defined as the long sequences of trills, trill-meows and meows used by female cats in heat when they want to attract a male partner, and also by male cats (unneutered as well as some neutered males) who respond to the signals (vocal and/or olfactory) of a female cat in heat. However, cats often use other sounds (soft trilling, cooing, mewing, howling) when they are looking for a mating partner. I have tried to collect a few samples of each of these sounds.

The image to the right shows the phonetic characteristics (waveform, spectrogram and pitch contour) and gives an audio example of a short domestic cat mating call.

MALE CAT MATING CALLS

RED CALLS AND MEOWS

The red tomcat in this video is meowing repeatedly (perhaps calling for a female?) as he patrols and scent marks his home territory.

KOMPIS CALLS FOR FEMALE CAT

The domestic cat Kompis was injured in a fight with another cat and had large infected wounds in his face when he came to us. We took him to the vet, and treated is wounds daily. Still, being a tom cat (we could not neuter him until his wounds had healed completely), he could not resist the urge to "sing" to our female cat Donna at the other side of the fence. This video only shows a short sequence of his "serenade" of meows, trills and trill-meows, which went on for hours.

KOMPIS MEOWS AT DONNA AND ME

The tom cat Kompis first meows to court our spayed female cat, and then notices me and meows in a completely different way (much higher pitch). He came to us with infected wounds in his face (he probably got them in a fight with another cat). We took him to the vet, who treated them and Kompis stayed with us. We love him.

MATING CALLS AND OTHER SOUNDS BY FEMALE CATS IN HEAT

VIMSAN COOS AND TRILLS SOFTLY

In this video clip, the domestic cat Vimsan (who is in heat) is trilling and cooing softly.

VIMSAN TRILLS QUIETLY

Another sound that our cat Vimsan made was soft weak trilling. Can you hear them in this video?

VIMSAN IS IN HEAT AND MEWS SOFTLY

This is one of the few videos I have of Vimsan the only time she was in heat (she was neutered shortly after) as she had come to live with us. In this video clip she is mewing repeatedely.

FEMALE CAT MATING CALL 1

I found this video of a female cat in heat on YouTube.

FEMALE CAT MATING CALL 2

I also found this video of a female cat in heat on YouTube. Can you hear that this cat calls in a slightly different way than the previous one?