The 小猫咪 Theory

Translation: The Dear-Little-Pussy-Cat Theory

Apparently, in any verbal encounter with any one of any age, race and sex, only 30% of the listener's attention is focussed on what is being said. The other 70% of the time, they concentrate on your body, your tone and the other nuances that is so undefinable and yet so critical in any verbal communications.

In a ten minute conversation that means, 3 minutes is spent on hearing what you really have to say, and the other 7 minutes, checking out the decible of your voice, the intonation, the accent, the tone, the playing with the hair, the licking of lips, the cleavage of the baring of fangs, and possibly your bad breath.

And they have the results to prove it.

In an experiment involving a cat and a human being, it was noticed that the cat responds to the tone of the person rather than the content of the speech. The cat would sidle up to the person and purr and rub itself against the person's leg when a coaxing, loving tone was used, even though the essence of that communications was, "I'm going to boil you in hot water, and then skin you and impale your head on a stick."

(As an aside, it just proves my point that cats are not the most intelligent of creatures.)

So the point to the above whole tirade is, just speak nicely to the cat. Be as gentle, as sweet, as loving, as disgustingly coy as you need to be, and never mind what you say. It doesn't matter what you say, really.

Oh, and the same applies to human beings as well, of any age, sex, race, colour and intelligence level.

I need to start pretending I'm a nice, sweet, gentle, tactful person.

Add to that, I think I'll be brushing my teeth more often too.