I've told this story before, but we had a "dumped" cat that my family adopted one summer who didn't meow. Cat was best buddies with our St. Bernard, and we wondered if when he decided to make a noise finally, he'd bark! Well, when he decided to "talk" it took us a couple days to figure out where we'd heard that noise before - it's wasn't a bark, it cetainly wasn't a meow ... then we relizaed he was doing a very good imitation of the squeak of the cellar door!