"Psycho kitten!"

Hi all, new to this forum here. I have a 4-month old kitten named Marbles who has been with us for 8 weeks now.

Marbles is a Jekyll and Hyde kitten [emoji]128516[/emoji] When she's tired, she's super cuddly and sweet, purrs and snuggles. When she's not sleepy, she goes on zooming tears around the house like she's possessed. You can't pet her, touch her, get near her. If you try, she runs away and hides. She's constantly on "alert" and will puff her tail and sometimes arch her back over nothing- like, if she sees me, or if I say her name. She acts afraid of us, although she's clearly not really. She sleeps with us all night and is a lovey sweetheart then.

Is this just usual kitten behavior? I had kittens as a kid, but don't remember them acting quite this wild! But maybe I just don't remember.

The only thing that gives me pause is I've noticed her back muscles twitching sometimes. Then sometimes she'll go on a tail-licking spree. She spent a good deal of this afternoon chasing her tail or licking it- enough that I felt like it was obsessive, and made an effort to tear her away and get her doing something else. She also randomly shakes her head sometimes. I read about feline hyperesthesia, and am trying to see if the back twitching correlates with the crazy-acting zooming around all freaked out, but am not sure yet. During most of the tail-chasing/licking today, I didn't see back twitches.

She sounds like a purr-fectly normal, very busy 4-month-old kitten to me! [emoji]128571[/emoji]

She sounds adorable.  When my little man was 4 to 6 months old he did the same thing.  I thought for sure he was dipping into my coffee when I wasn't looking.  

She just needs to play and to hunt and burn off a lot of energy.  And there's always that random nothing in some other room and she just HAS to go attack.....it's in the kitty rules.  lol  She may not be running from you.  She may want you to chase her and stalk her as she would have with her siblings.  Try fake running after her, making nice noises, then duck behind a door and hide,  Let her stalk and find you.  Then you do the same for her, etc.

If you try playing with her it'll help stop her from the hissing at you.  Not touching her but you controlling things for her to attack. They love ribbon or yarn tied to the end of a paper towel tube that you can swing around for her to attack.  She'll also love a small stuffed animal that you can play peak a boo with her around a box so she can stalk it and pounce on it.  And, of course, laser pointers are pure heaven for them.  While you're playing with her, be sure to laugh, egg her on, say her name a lot, call her good girl, and so on.  She'll associate you with tons of fun.  I also hung an old, thick comforter from the closet door.  He loved climbing up and down that, over and over, attacking every nothing he could find up there.

Kittens are possessed, psychotic, spastic freaks......that's what makes them so stinking cute.  lol

As far as the rippling back muscles, zooming around, acting completely scared, and tail flicking like crazy, she could have feline hyperesthesia. It is still unlear as to what exactly this disorder is; some experts do believe it is a seizure disorder (DO NOT LET THAT SCARE YOU), but the "effects" of the episodes do not seem to have any lasting effects, unlike other seizure disorders (epilepsy), other than a minor annoyance to the cat.
Almost all experts agree that the MAJORITY of cats with hyperesthesia benefit from extreme playtime. That means getting a Da Bird toy and playing with the kitten or cat until they pant, once a day. This seems to lesssen the episodes' length and frequency of recurrance.
If the furious tail licking results in self injury, please take kitty to the vet. It may be something as simple as fleas (if your kitten does have hyperesthesia, fleas can exacerbate the symptoms), or there could be an unknown underlying condition (like feline hyperesthesia or kitty OCD) that your vet can diagnose and treat.
All other symptoms you mention are normal kitten behavior!