Blackie miaows and sometimes whines like a toddler when exerting pester power.
Big Tom has a MUCH deeper call, goes 'geow' and eck. Big Tom's call is very guttural.
When the BBC did those lovely cat
SCIENCE programmes a few years ago, the boffins came to the conclusion that different cats' meow vocabulary was random, but their own staff would learn the meaning of specific 'words' and reinforce them with useful behaviour.
Certainly the cats I grew up with had distinct sounds for "hello", "give me food/attention"
[1], "come with me", "where ARE you?"
[2], "I'm non-specifically annoyed" and "let me out", as well as the usual silly play-fighting noises. And the blood-curdling call of a Siamese cat on heat, which is the sort of thing that echoes through your brain for the rest of your life, like an auditory equivalent of the smell of Lynx Nevada.
But most cat communication is body language. It's difficult to reciprocate properly as a biped without manoeuvrable ears and a tail, but they certainly respond to humans mimicking their eye contact. (I recon this is why they're magnetically attracted to people who don't like cats, because human cringing and hoping the monster will go away is cat for "look, I'm not threatening, I'll be your friend".)
[1] I think the overloading of this one is down to certain humans giving food to stop the cat pestering for attention, so they never became distinct.
[2] A rare example of a meow directed at another cat.