Or they’ve only heard jargon from outside their expertise.

Yeah, nonsense would've been a better word. Or word salad, it doesn't get said enough.

This is true, and it's absolutely fascinating, because it's literally the birth of a tiny language every time. The cat makes noise and notices that the human does something it wants, which makes the cat associate the noise with the action. The human hears the noise repeatedly and notices that the cat is happy about what they are doing, so they associate the noise with the action. It's a shared language between two individuals, which is just so precious!

I've got two cats who are sisters and they indeed have very different meows, not just sound but how they use them. One has a very distinct greeting meow literally only reserved for when she hasn't seen me in a few hours that is isn't in any way replicated by her sister.

i imagine it's like when we can't find the words to explain something and we just point at it and go "there, see that? that thing! over there! i'm pointing at it you dolt! aaargh!"

Not a human baby (how could they, most cats have never seen a human baby), but as a kitten they meow to their parents to get food etc. So we're their parents now and I guess they never really grew up and became independent.

Human: "Hello mister mittens! Kiss kiss kiss!"

Cat: "Coochie coo, idiot human, don't forget to feed me."

They're baby talking right back at us.

While I'm still not sure if this is true, there was a very interesting clip I saw to support the evidence, where a tiger enclosure was somehow across the street from a farm's cow enclosure. The tigers had started "mooing" along their edge of the fence in an effort to make the juicy, meat-filled cows feel safe around them.

No its not. You were mislead.

How rude would it be if I came home and ignored my cats greeting!?

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I read a headline on the internet once (in other words: What I'm about to say is almost certainly bullshit) that cat owners can understand THEIR OWN cats.

Anecdotally as a cat owner, it seems we train each other, cat makes a noise to get attention, human gives a kind of attention when hearing that noise, cat starts making that noise to get that specific attention. My cat has a food meow, an attention meow, a bath water meow (my cat likes to drink from the tub faucet) and a "it's 3 AM and my brain can't handle it" meow, and I can definitely tell them apart. There's also a difference between the "enjoying a shoulder rub" purr and the "make me breakfast make me breakfast make me breakfast make me breakfast" purr. Hand me a different cat and that cat speaks mandarin Swahili.

"The usual? Cake and pop?" "No, April, the unusual." "Fish and pop?" "No." "Cake and fish?" "No fish!"