Carney told me that in some animals, purring could be a sort of vocal tic, like nervous laughter; cats might also be trying to send out pleas for help or warning messages to anyone who might dare approach. Or maybe bad-times purrs are self-soothing, says Jill Caviness, a veterinarian and cat expert at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and parent to a feline named Electron. They could even be a cat’s attempt to dupe its pain-racked body into a less stressed state.
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