This is why we used to call birds “ack-acks” when our son was little. Our cats were always longingly staring at birds through the window.
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Yes it’s definitely distant birds. Here’s my Sphynx cat doing the same thing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5p4Hds47fQ
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Cats have a scent organ in their mouths. The chattering is them pulling air over that organ in order to smell their potential prey better.
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I’m sure you did at least a basic Google search on the issue before you posted so you could be sure you weren’t posting animal abuse so we know we’re in safe hands! (Does that adequately match the passive aggressiveness of the question or should I try harder)
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I didn’t know this–thanks! Is it also a fortunate evolutionary coincidence that she’s also making bird-chirpy, come-hither noises?
… like they’d fall for that. I still see it as the Mammals vs Dinos Sneaky Superbowl Eleventymillion. (Special Halftime Show - this Millenium only: Humans!)
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All cats are in constant communication with the Lloigor, as they are their willing and fiendish spies.
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Yes, well… see… that’s because human girls exhibiting chattering behavior are quite a bit rarer than domestic cats exhibiting it. 
Cats make lots of odd noises when on their own (2011 oldie but goodie): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP3gzee1cps
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I think you are confusing cat chattering with the “bad smell face” cats make (like the one below) when using their vomeronasal gland. (It’s like a second olfactory organ.)
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Funk mouth! My fave weird cat thing
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Fun Siamese cat story:
They were purportedly used as temple guards.
The beautiful Siamese is the legendary temple cat of the King of Siam. The cats were not only valued by the king for their exquisite beauty, but also they were used as guard cats. Siamese would be perched on tall columns around the throne of the king. If anyone threatened the king, the cats would jump down from the pillars onto the individual. Between the size of the Siamese, their strength and their ability to jump down from a height, they would knock the person to the floor. If need be, they would scratch at the face of the person who thought he could harm the King of Siam.
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Siamese - Maine Coon cross??! Pictures! We demand pictures. Video even better 
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“This cat appears to be chattering adorably with invisible fairies, but I’m sure that some terrible illness or infirmity has in fact befallen it and all I achieved by posting this is to serve the sociopathic tendency of social media to suppress human empathy in its endless provision of amusement and distraction.”
Wrong. That cat is out of its f-----g mind and I feel so sorry for it.
naw - the cat’s just an exhibitionist
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Not a dick! He was watchin out for his feathered buddies! Haha
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The real question is not what the cat is doing (as many have pointed out, it’s a bird thing), but why does it do this particular thing. Desmond Morris, in his book Cat Watching, says it’s because the cat is so eager to chomp down on the bird that it can’t control its jaws.
I can’t really buy that explanation, though, for a couple of reasons:
First, it seems unlikely that cats would have evolved a behavior that would surely alert any bird to fly away.
Second, I’ve never heard this sound when our cat is chomping on something (though, I admit, it’s never had the opportunity to chomp on a bird).
(Yeah, our cat does this sometimes, and it seems to almost always be when watching birds. Plenty of other times, it watches birds silently.)
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Cats come programmed with all sorts of evolutionary behaviors that get short-circuited or weirdly expressed when they live indoors. E.g., in the wild it makes good sense to flee the scene after burying a bowel movement, which could alert predators and prey alike to your exact location. Inside? After using the litterbox, some cats tear around the house for a few minutes while looking startled. I’ve never seen a cat chatter outside (never seen video of it, either, though I could be wrong) so this could be some sort of evolutionary impulse that gets thwarted by window glass and then expresses in a strange way.
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Ga-gagagaga! Ki-ki-ki-ki! Quack! Quack! [“A song leaps into my heart and pulls me to the window!”] Quick! Quick! Quick! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
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It’s kind of an old picture with a lousy camera
She’s also a calico. Doesn’t have those tufts of fur on her ears like maine coons do, but she’s a pretty long cat and she weighs around 12 to 14 pounds (very big for a siamese but small for a maine coon).
Her brother is much bigger though. A siamese/american shorthair mix that’s around 20 pounds
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