Phonetic features of human languages spoken by sentient cats

In my world I have a couple species of sentient animals, mainly cats, who among other things are capable of communication with human beings.

While I am perfectly happy to resort to explanations involving magic to justify their increased intelligence, and them using it an a human-like way - these species already have some sort of relationship with magic even without involving their speech ability - I would like to incorporate "real life" distinctive aspects of these animals' anatomy in the way they sound when speaking a human language, or even in their ability to understand it.

What would the phonetic features of a human language spoken by a sentient cat be?

Also, how would their ability to process human languages spoken by humans change?

Edit: It has been pointed out to me that the question was very broad. I am also interested in the same question applied to birds of prey and possibly other animal species as well, but I edited to focus on the species that is most relevant to me.

posted over 9 years ago

Michele C‭

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