posted by on September 2, 2025
With very short exceptions, my parents have had cats for as long as I’ve been alive. My nuclear family is close and has plenty of words, phrases, or family references/in-jokes1 that I took for granted growing up. When I was in middle school, my at-the-time crush came over around my birthday because she had gotten me a present.2 She was allergic to cats, so she had little-to-no concept of cat behaviors. While we sat on the couch, I tried to explain what the cats were doing and why, using as specific of language as I could: the ones I learned from my family. She responded that those words weren’t real, and I explained that my family always used these words. It then dawned on me that families could create common-sounding words that were actually extremely niche.
Many years later, I’ve since learned that all words are made up. With that in mind, here’s a descriptivist approach to my family’s words for describing cats. Where possible, I’ve tried to include any known etymology I could in the footnotes:
boonk /bʊŋk/ verb — a cat intentionally hitting its forehead on anything 3
smear /smiɚ/ verb — a cat rubbing either side of its chin on anything 4
thuth /ðʌð/ verb — a cat sticking its tongue out with its mouth closed 5
proot /pɹut/ noun — a small coo a cat does to get your attention, but not quite a meow 6
tug /tʌg/ verb — a cat clawing a fabric or other cloth texture to leave its scent behind 7
topple-you-x-y-z /ˈtɑpl̩-ju-ɛks-waɪ-zi:/ verb — when you scritch a cat’s chin continuously until it goes from standing to laying down in a smooth motion, without interrupting the scritches 8
skrank /skɹæŋk/ noun — any meow that’s intentionally not sing-songy, but is also not stoccato 9
smearouette /smiɚɹəˈwɛt/ noun — when a cat is doing figure-eights, usually around your legs, while repeatedly smearing 10
padh padh padh /pæd pæd pæd/ (imperative?) verb — to knead or bake muffins or biscuits
triangles /‘tɹaɪˌæŋɡəlz/ noun — a cats’ ears, as a shorthand for talking about a cat more generally
boodle /bud(ə)l/ verb — to traverse the stairs, usually descending, at great speed 11
boodley boodley /bud(ə)li bud(ə)li/ adjective — resembling or characteristic of the act of boodling
There are plenty more that I culled from this list. They tend to be reused/recontextualized standard English words used in cat contexts or just onomatopoeias with nothing else interesting about them. I think this list comprises a good set of words and phrases which would not be immediately apparent what is meant by them on their own, without context.
If you or your family have words like this, I’d love to hear about them, so long as a family member created the word. I don’t have any interest in hearing about people who adopted late-00s-to-early-10s cat meme words (e.g. longcat, if-it-fits-I-sits, etc), since I was there for all of that.
Footnotes
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This tended to be quotes from books, movies, home videos12, or even misprinted words on a mug13. ↩
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It was a hard-cover, bound, and blank sketchbook full of 8.5x11 pages. I never used it because I was afraid of making bad sketches that I’d have to show to my crush and because it wound up being a lot bigger of a surface than most of the sketching I ever did. ↩
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Presumably a smaller, cuter-sounding onomatopoeic interjection of “bonk” because of the way that cats bonk their head while doing this, which eventually morphed into a verb, the way onomatopoeias tend to. ↩
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Possibly related to the science behind a cat trying to spread its scent onto the surface that it’s performing this action on. ↩
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A word that can only physically be said by making the same face as the cat. ↩
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Onomatopoeia. Often this will be followed by the same word but with a silent t after the first proot, to denote coos that are longer or ongoing. (i.e. “proot, proo(t)…”) ↩
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Each time the cat does so, its claws pull on the cloth in a way that’s similar to tugging a rope. ↩
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Topple-you has the same metric rhythm as the letter W, and WXYZ is the last four letters of the alphabet. ↩
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Onomatopoeia. There’s debate in my family about how this word is pronounced. I tend to say skrank, while my dad is closer to schkrank. ↩
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A portmanteau of “smear” + “pirouette” ↩
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This started as a B. Kliban cartoon of a cat with a million legs, from his book, Cats, but I have lost track of how it transitioned from that drawing to this word. ↩
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One of the most popular home videos was of me as a young kid, pointing with my hand and announcing monotonously, “A bug.” ↩
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There was a mug my uncle once drank out of, which had the text “BUMPING LIKE A MUG”, but thanks to weird kerning and font, my uncle read it out loud as “BLIMPING LIKE A MLIG” and the phrase has stuck around ever since. ↩
