My daughter is 2.5 years old. I believe she is very intelligent, and speaks very well.

So she walks up to me last night as I was sitting there on the couch, and says "my friend died". I said "none of your friends died!", "what friend died?". She said "my friend, meow meow".

So the funny thing is she refers to dogs, cats, animals, and children as "her friends". She calls the cats "meow meows". We had 2 outdoor cats, one "skunk" was always hanging around the house, the other "bubba" likes to go on safaris in the desert for long periods of time and bring back trophies to the front porch.

About a month ago skunk disappeared, never to return. Bubba is still here, and has been hanging around the house a lot. Since skunk was not really much of a hunter or fighter, we figured he wandered to a neighbors house and became their pet, or was killed, or who knows what. He just disappeared.

We never told my daughter that skunk died, or anything about his disappearance. It is possible that she noticed that he wasn't around anymore, but I think skunk communicated with her from the grave to let us know he was dead.

You answered your own question already. The intelligence of the child is not to communicate with dead cats, but to realize what is going on around.

May the parents eat a spoon full of that wit too.

Well, it wasn't really a question.

It was more of a statement/theory.

Nothing wrong with that, people have claimed to be "contact" since the dawn of man

I agree with the OP in that children do have something which enables them to communicate with entities that we no longer can.
My son is a twin and is now 2 1/2 years old. His sister died in the womb and we have never told him this or said her name in front of him. Yet for over a year now when we put him to bed you can hear him talking to someone over the monitor. I've asked him a few times "who are you talking to". He just looks up at me and smiles then says his sisters name....

I grew up as a kid who constantly talked to dead people. I made the mistake once of mentioning at the funeral of an Uncle that i was very fond of that i didn't need to go into the viewing room to see him laying in the casket because he was standing behind my aunt who was comforting me. Sure i was sad he was dead, but they thought i didn't want to go in because i was scared to see the body, that was part of it sure, but i didn't need to see it to realize he was dead.

Once i said he was standing behind her, well you can guess what happened. Everyone lost it and instantly thought i was crazy and just a bad kid. I wasn't, i just didn't understand that not everyone could do that. I just kind of assumed that everyone could. It was a rude wake up call for me that no 8 yr old should have to go through, much less explain what i was seeing to parents who just didn't believe or understand what was going on.

My advice to you is to watch your daughter, ask her what she sees when she's staring at nothing and giggling to herself. Allow whatever she has to grow instead of making her feel like she's constantly stupid. Take it from someone who grew up in that atmosphere, it ain't healthy and its amazing i turned out like i did. I can still see those things because i learned to keep my mouth shut, but because of that, i was forced to grow up extremely fast (for a number of reasons that aren't related to the topic) but it was part of it.

Having said that, if she can do these things there is a chance she may grow out of it as she gets older. But it may get stronger and if it does, she's going to need your understanding and support. You don't need to understand it, but the first time she goes into a military graveyard and starts crying for no reason whatsoever, she's going to need some emotional support. Good luck.

So....your daughter told you her "friend" died, and you

a) assumed she was talking about the lost cat, and then
b) concluded she communicates with the spirit world.

And you're talking to us about how it's a shame people aren't "more open minded"?

when animals die they become one with the earth...dust...no cat spirit roaming around to let you know he is dead. Nothing to stress about, just pray over your child in case it is something bad like demons