territory or food), episodes of acute stress or pain (e.g., routine prophylactic injections), and instances of kitten deprivation. Less common calls from mature cats included purring, conspecific greeting calls or murmurs, extended vocal dialogues between cats in separate cages, "frustration" calls during training, or extinction of conditioned responses.

Owens et al. categorized cat vocalizations based on their acoustic structures. There are three categories: