Celepurrating Furmilies

Meowza hoomans,

If you have a two-cat household, you will know who would be Maximus and who would be Jeff. If not, then the currently viral meme will make you understand. Cats and memes are often seen as synonymous on the Internet. Yet, as a linguist I would always argue that true synonyms do not exist in a language what with all the different meanings, overtones, and connotations. And moreover, you post images of your cats not as memes but as family members, and there is a difference, namely in how we see the cats in a particular instance: as blank canvasses for our humour or as family members. Research talks about anthropomorphism.

And this newsletter talks about:

• 🐈‍⬛ Meowy Memes

• 😻 A Sample of the Monthly Meowlogisms

• 🧪 Research Selection of the Month: Interspecies Family

• 📚 Book Recommendations: Feline Detective Novels

Get your catnip ready and enjoy your short trip into the Cativerse.

Meowy Memes

If you have missed “Maximus” and “Jeff”, you’ll still have a chance to catch up with the latest viral trend for cats and dogs on Instagram and Tiktok. The audioclip “My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius” overlaying an image of a feline overlord is followed by the audioclip “My name is Jeff”, which is voiced over the image of a second, much less overlordly feline.

Click here on Maximus and Jeff on Instagram (Opens in a new window) to see a reel or google “Maximus and Jeff”.

When you listen to the audioclips, you will recognise the first line as that of the character played by Russell Crowe in the movie “Gladiator”. The second line comes from the movie “22 Jump Street” and is the line of Channing Tatum’s character Jenko, an undercover cop. Those lines have been around for some time and have already surfaced as memes. Now they have appeared in connection with cats and dogs.

In addition to the audio, the textual element “Every 2 cat household has” offers you some variation, too: “every cat owner has a Maximus and a Jeff”, “we have a Maximus and a Jeff”, “there will always be a Maximus and a Jeff in this family” and there are not just cats, but also dogs or a cat and a dog.

This variation of text and images is not only typical for a meme, it is actually essential - per definition, with each person adding their own bit to it and changing it slightly. To really catisfy your interest in memes, there is more reading for you in Chapter 6 (“Multimeowdality”) of my book and in my Meow Factor blog where you’ll find a bit on the already bygone “Eating the cats” meme.

A Sample of the Monthly Meowlogisms

Here are some of the meowlogisms collected in the last month. Unlike last issue, the words are sub-categorised based on the linguistic process used to create the meowlogism and the information added is limited to language, word type, and meowpheme. FYI, the linguistic convention to indicate a morpheme is to put it inside curly brackets.

😻 Substitution with a meowpheme

• Meowlympics - English, noun, {meow}

• Prokatzination, prokatzinieren - German, “procrastination/procrastinate”, noun and verb, {Katze] (cat)

• pawcrastinator - English, noun, {paw}, another variant for “purrcrastinate”* [*note: As you can see, you have quite a choice of meowphemes to catify “procrastination”. The meowphemes {cat, paw}, and {purr} work well.]

• everypawdy - English, pronoun, {paw}, a variation of “evfurybody”

• Romeow - name, {meow}

• bleptiful - English, adjective, {blep}, which means that the tongue of the cat is showing

• Pawbucks - name, Starbucks, {paw}

• i nostri a-mici - Italian, noun, “furiends”, {micio/micia} (kitty)

• Live long and purrrsper - English, phrase, {purr}🖖

• purr-longed hiatus - English, adjective, “prolonged hiatus”, {purr}

• meowndoline - English, noun, “mandoline”, {meow}

• purralize - English, verb, “paralyse” {purr}
  

😸 Compounding (putting words together)

• Katzen Blockade - German, “cat blockade”, an equivalent of “being incapussitated”, {Katze} (cat)

• Black Cat Friday - English, used by a shop selling cat art, {cat}

• I vomited (for “I voted”) - phrase,“just fulfilled his cat duty on elecion day”, people in the US wear buttons saying “I voted” after voting

😸 Spelling variation

• bocks, boks, boxx - noun, variation of “box”, examples for cat idiolects

• Good meowrning - variation of “Good meowning”

Oh, and in line with the furmily theme of this issue, the German version of “can opener” or “tin opener” for us hoomans is “Dosenöffner” and “Dosi”.

🎶 And here’s a seasonal song for you: Jingle Paws, Jingle Paws to sing under the Crispymouse Tree 🎄

Research Selection of the Month - Interspecies Family

Disclaimer: There is no real method behind the selection of the article apart from, first, I come across it somehow, and, second, I like the topic. In this month’s case, I found it when I did a forward citation search on Google Scholar. Erm, I was checking who cited “Purrieties of Language” and I found “Meowmy, Pawrents and Menschenwelpen ‘human puppies’”

Lind, M. (2024). Meowmy, Pawrents and Menschenwelpen ‘human puppies’: Linguistic practices of Doing Interspecies Families on German Instagram. Discourse, Context & Media, 60, 100800. ➡️ article (Opens in a new window)

On social media, it is perfectly normal to say that we love our cats and that they are family. With the words that we use, we emphasise kinship rather than ownership. We are not cat owners but guardians, and our cats are not pets but companions. In digital spaces, we refer to our cats as an integral part of our human families. It has also become perfectly alright for us to talk about our cats as family members in public. And that means the concept of "interspecies families" is totally normal.

The main findings are

🐱 Anthropomorphisation of Pets: Pets are often presented as family members through anthropomorphic language, with terms like “Mama,” “Meowmy,” and “Pawrents,” emphasising human-animal kinship rather than ownership.

🐱 Female-centered Narratives: The study found a strong focus on female pet owners, with terms like “Meowmy” and “Mami” being more frequent, highlighting the gendered nature of interspecies family language.

🐱 Social Media as a Space for Family Display: Social media, especially Instagram, provides a platform for constructing and performing interspecies families, allowing pet owners to create communities around shared narratives of love and kinship with their pets​.

Book Recommendations

In my adventuring in the wide realms of the Cativerse, I have come across a few books that would make good reading for cat loving fans of detective novels or detective story loving cat fans. Please note that I do not participate in any affiliate programme and I have just provided the links for you to easier find the books.

These books have feline detectives and are written from the perspectives of cats.

Mandy Morton: The No. 2 Feline Detective Agency series. So far, 14 books have come out, and yes! I have read them all. Very British and filled with meowlogisms. ➡️ Publisher's site (Opens in a new window)

Fabian Navarro: Band 1: Miez Marple und die Kralle des Bösen. | Band 2: Miez Marple und die Pfote des Todes. Incredibly funny, available only in German. ➡️ Thalia (Opens in a new window)

😸Well, and there’s this linguistic detective story with cats at the centre at the investigation of language: Edith Podhovnik: Purrieties of Language. How We Talk about Cats Online (2023). ➡️ Available in all bookshops. (Opens in a new window)

That’s all for this month. Fank mew furry much for reading, and looking forward to dispensing my linguistic catnip to your inbox 📦 next month.

Feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who might be interested in cats and language.