WELCOME TO WHAT IF

What if...cats could talk?  It's redundant to ask because actually cats do talk, quite well, in fact, with their body language.  Hey, if those people on TV can tell whether one is sincere, intimidated, lying, on and on, with a snippet of tape, you bet body language is important.  Cats do it about as well as anyone.  Henry, for instance.  If he's impatient with me about something, he lies down a few feet away and uses his tail like an impatient fist, slamming it rhythmically on the floor until I get the message.
If he's pleased, indulged, he will swing same tail in playful darts in sync with my teasing comments to him until we both tire of the game.  
His ears are also verbal: get him riled and they lay back saying "Back off or I'm swatting you with these lethal claws!"  If things are going his way, he listens to every word around him using those ears like sonar, letting them sort of tweak when the compliments are about him.
Paws work too.  Rub him, pat him, and they squeeze like little happy accordians, saying "Yes!"
Gracie, my girlfriend cat, uses her very presence as vocabulary.  She is patience personified.  She will sit by the pantry for amazingly long spells waiting for me to notice her food dish needs replenishing.  She waits until it's filled before she daintily picks a morsel to munch.  Henry, on the other hand, plows in like a starved hyena.  But he is such a gentleman about tipping the waitress.  I always get a nudge against my leg that says "Thanks" so eloquently.  I get two nudges if I'm wearing dark slacks that attract cat hair.
Gracie sits for hours on my vanity watching the water dish we have there for her; Henry prefers the fountain with running water that requires weekly cleaning.  Gracie waits for a stray Q-tip or small makeup sponge and entertains herself batting them around.  She is 'there' for her morning brushing as soon as my...as soon as I sit down in the bathroom, okay?  Towel on lap, cat on lap; it's a daily routine.  And I brush and tell her how beautiful she is for 5 minutes which she rewards with steady purring and offering the top of her head for kisses.
They are teaching me so much!