When my wife Rhea and I got Celeste, a 3-year-old tabby cat, five years ago, Celeste rarely vocalized. But after about a year, she began to "talk." She speaks most when she sees us open a can of cat food -- a series of rapid, short squeaks, like a trill on a trumpet. When she's petted, she lets go with a sweeter, more melodic mew. But, most remarkably, when Rhea comes to her, Celeste often says "ee-ah." Is she trying to say "Rhea"?

We don't expect to ever really know. But cat communication is an old story. Some cats rarely sound off at all -- George Page, on a PBS "Nature" program a few years ago, said the mother teaches the kitten to make sounds. If mom doesn't squeak, kit probably won't either. Also, Siamese cats tend to meow more than others do.

There seems to be a basic vocabulary common to most cats -- the hiss or growl when confronted with an unknown fellow feline; the yowl when a human steps on a cat's tail; the wail of the un-neutered female in heat; the purr of contentment while being petted. Says Javier Vasquez, a Manhattan veterinarian: "We get cats from all countries here, and they're able to `talk' to each other."

Within this common vocabulary, there is plenty of room for individual expression. Rick Ulfik, a Manhattan recording engineer, says Sylvester, one of his two cats, always meows when he leaves the litter box, as if announcing, "I'm done1x" Rick and his girlfriend Wendy, a linguist, believe that cats in the wild rarely meow, and that meowing is an attempt to come to terms with human speech. At home, Rick and Wendy use a kind of pidgin talk whereby the cats meow to them, and they meow back. "Cats can understand emotions -- anger, joy, etc.," he says.

Sellers describes cat language as tonal, offers lessons in cat "grammar" and describes sounds that express concepts like "lonely," "hungry" or "food." Observations by others seem to corroborate the tonal language theory -- Rick Ulfik, for example, says, "Felix meows when he wants to go into the hall. When we don't let him, he changes his tune and meows in a whining, higher-pitched way." The book also gives advice on how to use the language on your own cat.

Moyes' book also places a strong emphasis on listening and talking to your cat. "Recognizing your kitty's needs through sounds and postures will ultimately strengthen the bonds between human and cat," summarizes a book reviewer, Naomi Gesinger.

Soooo. . . is Celeste trying to say "Rhea" when she says "ee-ah"?

We don't know.

But when she says, "Rhea Lewin Geberer," then we'll really have something to talk about1x