Week 3: Reading the Tail
How language, repetition, routine and shared history give a signal meaning, without mistaking interpretation for certainty
8 March 2027
A signal has no meaning on its own#
“Reading the tail” borrows its name from an actual cat’s tail: low and swishing can mean irritation, or focus, or play, depending on everything around it — the ears, the context, what happened five minutes ago. Read it alone and you will guess wrong at least as often as you guess right. This course is not, however, a course in animal behaviour, and you are not going to spend this lecture on tails or ears. The problem you actually face is the same shape, aimed at something you can act on directly: your human cat’s own words carry no fixed meaning apart from everything around them either.
Take a human cat who texts you “I’m fine.” From a human cat who says it every Tuesday after a hard shift, it usually means “don’t push, just stay nearby.” From the same human cat the first time they have ever said it, or from a different human cat entirely, “I’m fine” might mean exactly what it says — or the opposite. The words are identical; the signal is not, because the signal was never just the words. It was the words plus everything you already know about this particular human cat, at this particular point in your relationship with them.
What gives a signal meaning#
- Repetition — a phrase or behaviour your human cat repeats earns a different reading than one arriving from them for the first time.
- Routine — signals that show up inside an established pattern (a nightly check-in, a joke that only lands after a bad day) carry the weight of that pattern.
- Jokes and register — tone that would be alarming from a stranger can be routine, even affectionate, from a human cat you have been talking with for months.
- Interaction history — the same sentence, sent by two different human cats, or by the same human cat at two different points in your relationship, is different evidence each time.
None of this makes interpretation certain. It makes it informed — a guess grounded in something more than the words on their own, which is a different thing from a guess dressed up as a fact.
Interpretation is not certainty#
Reading your human cat well does not mean you stop being wrong. It means your wrongness becomes visible and correctable, because you can point to what you read the signal against and revisit it when it turns out to be wrong. An interpretation you can name your reasons for is one you can revise. An interpretation you cannot is already halfway to being an assumption.
Outline#
- why a human cat’s words carry no fixed meaning apart from what surrounds them
- repetition, routine, register and history as the things surrounding them
- keeping interpretation revisable instead of letting it calcify
- what this means for logging Catwatch observations honestly
Teaching team
- Marisol Quaye — convenor