Just at that point the subenmadchen trod on the cat's tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of cat-profanity. But I admit this doesn't get us very far on the road to aesthetics.
Body language has perhaps the best candidates for universal signs.
Newly-hatched chicks will run for cover when they see the shadow of a bird moving on the ground. As they grow older, they become used to the more common types of shadows, and ignore them, but predators are necessarily rare, so they don't habituate to predator-shadows, and still run from them. A neat hack.