Cat now vocalizing a lot more

Over the past two weeks or so, our cat has started meowing a lot more than he used to. He will meow at the back patio door - and at the garage door. He will meow loudly and he varies his vocalization to keep our attention. He does this throughout the day. I work from home, and it is just slightly unprofessional to have a meowing cat in the background.

So how do we stop this behavior?

Things that factor into this:

I am 8 months pregnant - so perhaps he can sense the huge change that is facing us all.

Over the past few weeks we've had a lot of visitors come into the house.

We do on occassion let him out onto the patio - he loves to roll around on the cement, but he never goes off of the patio into the yard. We never let him out unaccompanied and it usually only for a few minutes.

Meowing at the garage is completely new - and recently he ran out into the garage - something we've never let him do and that he's never really shown any interest in.

He also seems distressed when my husband is upstairs and I am upstairs. It's kind of cute - like he wants us all together like one happy family.

I have tried
- spraying him with a water bottle when he's meowing at the garage door. Because we really don't want him getting in there and crawling up into the cars
- ignoring him
- yelling at him
- making loud noises to interrupt the behavior
- encouraging him to come to us and the petting him when he does (but he doesn't always come - sometimes he just keeps meowing)

The problem is I haven't figured out what works bests and I'd really like to get consistent in treating this.

Maybe he saw another cat going towards the garage and wants to investigate. Yelling and/or spraying him won't have any effect on the meowing as cats don't connect their behaviour with 'punishment', though will react to it by being even more stressed. In my long experience of many cats, constant meowing is about wanting another cat for company, any cat, even if they fight like mad for weeks, and the minute another cat shows up, they shut up, but how this will help you now is not very clear I guess. He IS neutered? If not, his urge to roam may be so strong that he'll start smelly spraying indoors very soon, and it might be best to have it done ASAP. He's old enough for the procedure.

He is neutered. But there is no way he can see into or near the garage. My only thought is he sees us going in and out of it.

Yes, or maybe the garage just seems to be in his line of vision... he wants to go dating and needs to be neutered.