My cat is a talkative guy. It’s a good thing he’s got a relatively soft voice because he uses it all the time. When he’s not in the same room as me, or if he’s uncertain about things, he often narrates his explorations in the form of short quiet meows that my family has dubbed “sonar.” He’s clearly talking to me, and he seems to like it if I occasionally respond with a “hi buddy” so he knows I’m still around. (Yes, I confess: I talk to my cat.)

This sonaring seems irresistible. He even does it when silence would be by far the preferable action. For example, while exploring the downstairs of my parents’ house — the portion of the house where the dog is — the dog that would dearly love to see if cat really is as tasty as she thinks it must be. If the cat would just go silently, he’d get a lot more time in exploring before the dog realized what was up and gave chase. But no. Sonar is apparently required.

It really got him into trouble last weekend. I was packing up and getting ready to leave my parents’ house, and the cat knew exactly what was up and predicted with great accuracy the impending stuffing-in-cat-carrier and riding-in-car that was coming up. So, like any good cat, he hid. And usually I can find him really easily because I know the places he hides, but this time I couldn’t locate him. I checked behind the bed, under the bed (three times), in the closet, under the dresser, in the linen closet, back to the bedroom closet, behind the bed again… and apparently the cat got more and more worried as he saw all this from his vantage point under the bed (remember, I’d checked there! Sigh.).

And as he got more and more worried, he did as he always does when he’s worried: he activated his sonar mechanism.

At first it was so quiet that I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but I answered him, so he sonared again, so I answered him. And little by little, I honed in on the under-the-bed region, and there he was.

He looked so unhappy that I’d found him.