Furry ventriloquism 

I never knew what cats were thinking, until my teenaged daughter started “rescuing” them, one by one, and bringing them home.  In one case, it was a clandestine operation involving a smuggle under her jacket, and a fait accompli when we arrived.

Like many Dads, I found it hard to stay mad for very long, and actually was secretly amused by the lengths to which she would go to get these fleabags in the door.
Ahem, one of them actually was a fleabag.  This was the smuggled one, and it came from her aunt’s place, who once (when asked how many cats she had) said “several”.  Really, it was about 30, so this was classified as a rescue.  Apparently, her Mom knew about it beforehand, and was in cahoots.  When produced from inside her jacket, it was already scratching and had sores on its chin…..vet visit the very next day.

Once we had domesticated these things, it became my daughter’s habit to amuse everyone by devising clever things that she thought each cat would say in a given situation, then (with a straight face) speak the lines in a voice which was a dead ringer for the Gingerbread Man from Shrek.

It nearly made me pee myself, and, of course, this encouraged her.  So, for the few more years that she lived at home, I got so used to it that I almost found myself wanting to have a conversation with the silly things.

When it finally came time for her to go on her own, she left them with us.
We were standing at the door to see her off, and my tears started to roll.
All I could think of to say was “Now, how am I going to know what the cats are thinking?”