Illustration by Vicky Scott / Ikon Images Oh the depths of conversation one can have with a cat. “You’re a cat!” “Do you know you’re a cat?” “Are you a good cat?” To which my cat – and, I would venture, every cat – responds with a slow blink of disdained resignation, quite clearly replying: “You foolish human, I am obviously the best cat.” For eight years, this has been the rapport between Clio, the adorable tortoiseshell I rescued from a cramped flat in Kingston, and the humans with which she shares a home. And I thought that acceptable. But a podcast recommendation ( The Allusionist , in which Helen Zaltzman unpacks the secrets of language) has sent me down a rabbit hole into the weird, wonderful world of “augmentative interspecies communication” (AIC). If it sounds terrifyingly futuristic, that’s all the more fitting, as one of the poster-cats for this technology is cared for by the sci-fi author Mary Robinette Kowal.…