I was attempting the hell to communicate

In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Spock communicates with a whale via a telepathic mind meld. He talked with the whales, the whales talked back. It was all understood. A nice little conversation.

If only it were that easy.

The subject of communication with animals came up the other night while I was watching random videos on Spikedhumor. One video had a 10-hour-old kitten meowing loudly, apparently calling for its mother. Shortly after a reply from the mother is heard, and the mother arrives and picks up the kitten.

Mocha freaked out. She started meowing, and then began intently looking around the apartment. She did this for a good 10 minutes before finally coming to the conclusion that there was nothing TO find. Amazingly enough, she understood the kitten's cries and believed a kitten might need some help. Her meows to me seemed to say, "kitten in danger! Help me look!"

Scientists have always said animals can communicate with one another via various forms of communication - body language, a whale's song, a wolf's howl - the animals seem to talk with one another just fine. It's communication with humans that seems to be a problem.

So how exactly can one communicate with animals? Well, we can't all be like Dr. Grant in Jurassic Park III and become fluent in Velociraptor in 90 minutes ("no, call for help!"). Well, there are so-called "animal psychics" who allegedly can read an animal's mind and then tell you what the animal is feeling. Now if psychics truly did exist, I doubt they could completely understand an animal's thought process. With an animal's brain not quite working the same way as a human's, I think the most a psychic could truly get out of an animals brain are base thoughts like "hungry" and "sleepy." No, these pet psychics more than likely are making educated guesses.

Then there's people like the man with his own show, The Dog Whisperer. I've only seen the show once, and if you've never seen it, basically this man goes to a person who owns a dog with behavioral problems. The man then determines the basis for these problems and offers solutions. The man is talented, I'll give him that - but he really is just a very skilled behaviorist. If you spend enough time around a particular animal it should become second nature to understand why said animal will act in a particular way, and how to discourage/encourage that act.

What about technology? Those tech wizards over in Japan have released the Bowlingual and Meowlingual in years past, which act as dog and cat "translators." The pet "speaks" into the device, the device reads the pet's speech, and then offers a text translation to let you know what the pet is saying. Pretty cool, in theory. But the idea behind this is that the makers probably spent countless hours with dogs and cats, recording their speech, and then associating certain meows/barks with behaviors. "Oh, after this bark, the dog went to go eat his food. That must be its 'I'm hungry' bark. And after this bark, he scratched at the door, that must be the 'I want out' bark." So, they associate behavior with the recorded speech, and then tell the computer to display that behavior whenever it hears a bark with that tone and pitch.

So, it's all about behavior, and that's probably the best we can hope for. It can be difficult for some pets, I admit. Take Mocha - by nature, Himalayan cats are very chatty. Mocha has something to say about nearly everything. It's tough to get a bead on what exactly she's trying to tell me. I'd be hard pressed to distinguish between "rub my belly" and "this issue of global warming is a concern to us all." She seems just as frustrated as me when she can't seem to get her point across. She may REALLY want to talk about global warming.