猫
māo · HSK 2
cat
🐱 radical 犭(animal) + 苗 miáo (sprout) — phono-semantic: animal that says 'miao'
The 犭 radical marks animals; 苗 (miáo, sprout) gives the sound. So 猫 = an animal pronounced roughly like its sound, which lines up with the English onomatopoeia 'meow'.
猫 — dog/beast radical 犭 + 苗 (miáo, sprout)
猫 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The left side 犭 is the 'beast' radical, signaling an animal. The right side 苗 (miáo) supplies the sound, which also evokes a cat's 'meow'. Originally written 貓 with the 豸 radical for clawed beasts; 犭 became standard in simplified Chinese.