A group of animal behaviorologists believe cats may pick up regional “accents” from their owners and that there may even be several dialects of cat in different parts of the same country.

The scientists, from the University of Lund, in Sweden, will spend the next five years recruiting cats from opposite ends of the country to gather information about what their meows mean.

They will investigate how cats vary the melody, or intonation, of their meow when “talking” to other felines and humans.

Led by phonetics researcher Susanne Schotz, the team hopes to discover whether cats respond differently to the sounds their owners use to calm them.