Nearly all New York State pet owners talk to their pets like they're fellow humans, according to a recent poll.  

Many believe their dogs and cats can respond with barks or meows that communicate hunger, fear, or simply the need to pee.  

But do the animals tawk back in a Brooklyn accent?  

That's the sort of thing Swedish cat lover and phonetics researcher Suzanne Schötz is working to find out. 

The Lund University researcher, who has three cats of her own, has launched a new study on how cats communicate. (See "Surprising Things You Never Knew About Your Cat.") 

For her experiment, Schötz is recruiting cats and their humans from Lund, in far southern Sweden, and from Stockholm, 310 miles (500 kilometers) north. 

People from both regions have discernible dialects, so her goal is to discover if their cats do, too. 

She also hopes to discover whether the cats' meows mean different things, and if they respond differently based on