Is he "Roaring"?

Whenever Forrest is in a playful mood and is physically higher than us (example: I am laying on the floor and Forrest is looking down at me from the coffee table, or when he is at the top of his tall cat tree looking down on my husband or me) he gets all excited and lunges at us making a sound that is I can only describe as like a human cough mixed with a dog bark.

It's the funniest thing and my husband loves to get him all riled up when he is on the cat tree and make him "roar" at him. Does anyone else's cat do this? I assume that this is normal, but I've never had a cat that has done this before.

He's "chuffing," which is a tiger habit, I believe.

Ah..."chuffing". That sounds like an appropriate term for it.

He seems quite aggressive and lunges out at us when he does it. Maybe he imagines that he is a large fierce Tiger when he is playing.

Tripod does that quite often. He is so funny. He jumps sideways at me, fluffing up his tail and roaring loudly. As soon as I move toward him he runs as fast as he can and then flops down and starts purring. If you think a 3 legged cat can't run fast, you're mistaken. It is a total riot. Of course then I pet him, get up and go back to what I was doing, and he starts all over again. I used to think it was kitten behavior, but he's 6 1/2 now.