Grice’s Cats

My analysis of conversational implicature extends to the syntax used in my own home. One evening I returned home to find my wife gardening.

When I asked her what we were doing for dinner, she said, 'I want to go out.' That is, she produced a certain sequence of sounds, and as a result I knew that she conversationally implicated that she wanted us to get in the car and drive to a restaurant, where we would have dinner. The next night, our cat was sharpening his claws on a Persian rug: I almost yelled at him. But my wife said, 'Don't get mad; he's just conversationally implicating, that he wants to go out." The two episodes prove my point.

Both my wife and my cat can implicate, conversationally, that they want to go out. Do we want to assert that they both 'signify' in the *same* way? Surely that is at best an oversimplification, although it is clear that both can communicate!