Billi (cat)

Billi (born c. 2009) was a female domestic shorthair cat who displayed behaviors that may have been human-animal communication. Billi reportedly learned over 70 words. She used a set of soundboard buttons, made by Learning Resources and FluentPet, to "talk".

Billi was the subject of scientific study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego. She was part of the TheyCanTalk study and was monitored by cameras placed in the living room of her owner Kendra Barker.

Biography
Billi was born around 2009. Her exact date of birth remains unknown. Her last owner Kendra Barker is a veterinarian who specializes in zoo, aquatic, and wildlife species. Billi ran across a road in 2009, causing a car accident. That's when she met Barker, an undergrad at the time. Barker took Billi in when her owner couldn't be found. In May 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Barker taught Billi to use buttons to "speak". Billi was already 11 years old by then. Barker used programmable buttons that Billi could press in succession to form "sentences", and use words such as "mad", "ouch", and "later". After a while Barker and Billi joined the TheyCanTalk observational research study.

Billi had Feline hyperesthesia syndrome and Chronic kidney disease. When she fell terminally ill, she started using her talking buttons less.

In the social media videos, Billi can repeatedly be seen pressing the buttons "catnip" "water" when Kendra was drinking her morning coffee.

Her favorite word was "mad".

Use of language
Billi used augmentative and alternative communication. She pressed buttons on a mat, each programmed with a recording of a specific word, such as "Billi", "food", "mad", "now", "afternoon", "catnip", "fan toy", "zoom zoom" and "bye". Whenever these buttons were pressed, they played the words they were programmed to, similar to the Fitzgerald Key, a method used to teach deaf children sentence structure. Billi could reportedly string a few words together in broken sentences. Billi however appeared to string words together less frequently than dogs in the same training program.