Noisy cat!

[MissBrown]

My cat (approx 12 yrs, ginger and female) meows day and night. She does it for food, for fuss, to go out, to come in and also does it if you meow at her!

It is so bad my husband has threatened to drop her off on the motorway on the way to work! I'd drop him off first though and he knows it.

She gets louder and more persistent if you ignore her and changes the sound of it for her different needs.

She can also be quite aggresive and will regularly bite and scratch. All this probably explains why she ended up in the rescue home in the first place!!

I get that she is vocal and I can't change this but it drives everyone mad! I have had her since she was about 12 mths old and it has always been the same. She is healthy and has regular worming etc so have ruled out any health issues.

Any ideas? Or anyone with a crazy cat like mine who can sympathise?!

[cozietoesie]

At 12 years old and with the same household, your chances of changing her now are pretty slim, I'd say. My instinct, though, is that she's come to associate talking/yelling with pleasure coming to her and you react to her stimulus by providing those good things in response. (Food, fuss, bladder relief, warmth etc.) Entrenched behaviour now, therefore.

I would have tried, when she was younger, to interrupt that cycle by - for instance, giving her fuss/food and so on when she was quiet and generally ignoring the yowls. Now - I don't know. You could still give it the old college try but.........

My boys have only yelled when they want to locate me or really need some attention but when they do, they're so loud I can appreciate your problem.

[MissBrown]

Thanks for your reply. I think I will probably have to learn to live with it. Funnily enough it was one of the reasons why I chose her from the rescue- I thought that it was cute that she was 'talking' to me!

She hasn't shut up since!

[cozietoesie]

Well you could still try - rewarding quiet behaviour etc - it's not a lost cause completely. (I re-trained Seniorboy when he came to me at 13, again on some things when we moved house a couple of years ago, and even this last week when I wanted him to learn a couple of new words and a knock to indicate that his favourite cupboard door was being opened for him to go in. He's pretty easy to train being a Siamese but you might win out.)

Best of luck, anyway.

[MissBrown]

Thank you .

[ithaka]

I can related. I got my cat as a teeny kitty from a cat home, because she was mewing pathetically. Now I wish she would put a sock in it!

However, she is 20 this year and utterly adored by all, despite waking us up at night to have a good old grumble about the weather.