My cat won't stop screaming at me

I have a 3 year old indoor female cat (half Russian Blue, half Persian)named Jezebel. In the past few months she has started this very passive aggressive behavior. She walks around the house "yowling" at me. She sits on the toilet seat while I am in the shower and LOUDLY meows, she will sit in the bedroom while I am in the living and howl on the bed until I come in there. She has started pooping on my bathmat, bed, etc. when she is not getting enough attention. She seems so disgruntled and unhappy! I cannot stand this! I took her to the vet a few months ago for a full checkup and nothing turned up so I don't think it is physical. I give her lost of attnention when I am home, but I work full time and travel about one weekend a month. I have 2 other indoor cats that she seems to love who keep her company. Anybody have any experiences like this?

Hi, Is she spayed? If not she might be in heat. that's all I can think of right now. Someone else will probably have some good suggestions.

Yes, she is spayed. She has no health problems to speak of, other than sporadic respiratory irritations which I understand are common in Persian cats. Thanks...

Well, on the behavior side of it. There's a few things to consider. Have there been any minor or major changes to the routines in the house? If so, she may be reacting to those. How long have you been traveling while you've had her and when did she start this? How many litter boxes are in the house right now? She may be trying to tell you she wants a different or cleaner litter box. If all the medical work has been done, maybe we can figure out what exactly is bothering her.

Maybe the litter box is the problem. I am obsessive about cleaning/changing it. I had 2 at one point, but they would only use the one box. I have had it about 4 months.

We moved about six months ago, but this only started about one month ago. She seems to be fine when I am traveling. I have a housesitter who comes and stays and she is great about playing with them. Jezebel is very affectionate with her.

Thanks for the posts. Is there behavior treatment for animals, provided this continues? I literally have not slept through the night since June due to all of her wailing at all hours.

There are behavior modifations you can work on if it turns out she is just wanting attention. If she has been fine with you being gone and then all of a sudden decided she needed more attention I think it would have started earlier. I would try putting the other box back first. It's even possible one of the other 2 cats startled her in the one box at one point and now she's not as happy to use it. Can you put it in another area of the house?

I think it may be a medical problem. This sounds just like what happened when one of my cats developed an inflamed GI system. Once she was treated with meds and a special mild diet for a few weeks the problem went away. I would take her to the vet and carefully describe all of the symptoms so the vet will know what to look for. Stuff like this won't show up on the typical annual check-up.

If she's spayed, dewormed, her teeth and gums are healthy, and she doesn't have kidney infections or any pinched nerves, and you are SURE she hasn't suffered some kind of scary traumatic experience, then it is probably that she wants something from you that she feels she is not getting (that's the miserable, deep scratchy yowl (usually) that really grates on the nerves. There are a whole range of "I want" cries, from small purrrups to desperate "I'm starving, I dying, want, want, want..."

You say yowling, which sounds like one of the very desperate demanding cries. You just have to figure what it is she wants!

On the other hand, if it is only loud (or soft) meeow-ing, they she may just be in a particularly vulnerable mood (cats can get depressed as well as lonely), and she needs to talk and cuddle a while.My cats usually talk constantly except when they are asleep. What are your cat's sleeping arrangements? Maybe she is lonely wherever she is sleeping. You can also try putting a used pair of socks (before washing them) on or under her sleeping blanket. She may only need some reassurance.

I think everyone would be interested in what you find out about what she is trying to say.

Hi AJohnson :angel2:

Have you had any luck yet? Just curious? I'm looking through the posts and seeing that it's been three days. I hope one of the suggestions that was offerred helped you. I can't imagine not sleeping from those loud "Yowls". I remember when my Ninya was in heat! EEEEEEEEEKS! That was rough...but for as long as you've gone without a good nites rest is horrible!

Well, Good Luck, I wish I had some information for ya...but I thought it was because she wasn't spayed. Not the case here. I have a feeling it has to do with the litter box. My friends cat does that occassionaly, now that I think of it...she also messes on the bathroom floor from time to time...she shares two litter box's with another cat, but I couldn't even tell ya what that story is!?

Love, Peace &

Yes, please tell us how things are moving. Cats, like dogs, can really be angry when they feel deserted. Maybe, in the end, she is grateful to the caretaker for just being there, but means to punish you into eternity for going off on trips. Children also do this to their parents if they travel a lot. I personally would arrange a basket next to my bed, some nice, unwashed piece of my clothing under a blanket, and have the basket near enough that I could put my hand down without getting up or fully waking up. But aside from several of the youngest cats and one of the dogs, I sleep alone. Spouses often don't really care for animals in the bedroom (other than the human kind!).

One of my cats was so angry with me recently for having to change the open window entry a few weeks ago when I replaced three windows and added screen and shutters to them that he jumped up and down and across my chest several times a night as if he didn't know where the new entrance/exit was. He found it perfectly well when I was wide awake during the day, but he felt he had to register a protest over my barring of his usual window. He stopped after about 5 nights (I am alittle foggy about the exact time it took for him to quit, since, toward the end I didn't even open my eyes or surface completely, my brain having decided to ignore his game -- sort of like getting used to living next to a railroad track).

So cats really do take punishing owners as a very serious business, and it can go on for years unless you are lucky enough to be able to psych them out of it.

I have no right to even blush. I am only a pilgrim on the road, and not nearly long enough on it. I can only share what I have learned, and there are a billion bits of information still missing. And what little I know has been learned through often stupid, ignorant kindness that was in fact unknowing cruelty at times. If I look back and grieve over my lifetime of mistakes with other species -- and even with my own-- I can at least know that forums such as this will make it more and more difficult for ignorance for future generations of humans who interact at multi-ethnic and multi-species levels of life.

People talk about how scary the internet is -- the hacking and the viruses and the potential loss of all privacy. But I see the world as often very scary in general, and the internet as a great teacher and a great school that reduces ignorance, and therefore increases the ability to better handle the world and ourselves in it. People, like other animals, learn lessons when they need the information to deal with something that is occurring to them (both mentally or physically) at the moment. Other knowledge intake is much more laborious and often doesn't stick as well unless you use behavioral tricks like jingles, words and song together, 6 years of schooling that is partly taken up with repetion of facts and figures year-after-year until "you get it,"etc.

The internet offers a different kind of learning -- instant answers to burning or needful questions when they are at the forefront of attention. I love the richness and leisurelyness of books, but I also love the instantaneousness of the internet and this remarkable global village that it is (and we all are) beginning to create.