Managing Excessive Meowing in Cats

Excessive meowing can be a significant challenge for cat owners, disrupting the peace of your home and potentially causing sleepless nights. While their chirps, trills, and purrs might be delightful, yowling and excessive meowing can be both annoying and downright distressing. Understanding why your cat meows excessively and how to manage it effectively can improve your cat's quality of life and restore tranquility to your household.

(For dogs, see Excessive Barking in Dogs)

Why Do Cats Meow Excessively?

While meowing may be natural for cats since they communicate through both body language and vocalization, it can be disruptive to your household when done in excess. Some of the common reasons for excessive meowing include:

1. Hunger: Sometimes it seems like cats are always hungry. If your cat is used to being fed at specific times or events, they may start meowing in anticipation for food.

2. Attention-Seeking: Some cats meow in order to get your attention for play, affection, or to be let outside if they have experience as an outdoor cat (avoid letting your outside unattended to prevent disruption of wildlife and danger to your cat).

3. Anxiety and Stress: Cats may vocalize when they are uncomfortable with a situation. If you have recently moved or introduced a new member to your household, they may be experiencing stress or fear which can manifest itself as excessive vocalization.

4. Mating Behavior: Cats will yowl and cry in order to attract mates, especially females in heat and males who are near females in heat. This can sometimes be curbed by spaying and neutering, but not always, especially if they are spayed or neutered later in life.

5. Medical Issues: When cats are experiencing pain, discomfort, or cognitive dysfunction, they may meow more frequently. It is important to rule out medical issues with your veterinarian first.

Behavioral Management Strategies:

1. Identify the Cause:

   1. Keep a log of when and what triggers the meowing. This can help pinpoint the cause and how to manage it. Consult your veterinarian to rule out any medical issues that may be causing the meowing.

2. Provide Physical Exercise and Mental Stimulation:

   1. While it may seem like cats are perfectly happy sleeping all day, they do still need exercise. Using play and toys can help keep them physically active and also help them bond with you.

   2. Cats are smart animals and need mental stimulation. Providing them with puzzles, interactive toys, and having training sessions with them can help keep them mentally stimulated.

3. Manage the Environment:

   1. Create safe spaces for your cat to hide in when they are feeling afraid. If you want to try it out, make use of pheromone diffusers and supplements to aid in keeping your cat calm.

   2. To mask triggers, consider visual and auditory barriers. Closing curtains, separating cats into different rooms, and using white noise can all help your cat feel safer from the stimuli that might cause their excessive meowing.

   3. If you regularly feed your cat every time you wake up or when you come home from work, try a variable feeding schedule so your cat doesn’t anticipate when the food is supposed to be coming and start demanding it from you.

4. Manage the Behavior through Training:

   1. You can desensitize and counter condition triggers by gradually exposing your cat to them while providing rewards like treats or play. Over time, the triggers will become less scary and will decrease your cat’s reaction to them.

   2. Reward calm behavior. When your cat is quiet and calm, provide treats, attention, or play. When your cat meows, avoid responding no matter how annoying it may be. Even negative attention is still attention. Wait for them to be quiet and calm.

5. Seek Professional Help:

   1. If it’s a medical issue, a veterinarian may be able to provide a treatment plan that will ease the cat’s discomfort.

   2. If it’s a behavioral problem that you are having difficulty even starting to tackle, seek a professional trainer or behaviorist’s help. You may also need to see a veterinarian to get medication that can manage your cat’s stress while you start them on a behavior management plan.

      (You can schedule a consult with Jigsaw Animal Behavior and Welfare Consulting, LLC here)

Tools and Considerations:

1. Automatic Feeders: While automatic feeders may still keep your cat anticipating feeding time, it shifts the responsibility from you to the feeder. Your cat may stop seeking out you to feed them when they learn that the machine will do it at specific times.

2. Cat Trees: Cat trees are extremely useful enrichment. They can provide safe hide-outs, scratching posts, toys, and height all in one piece of furniture. All of these will help your cat feel safe and enriched.

While some of the noises your cat makes may be delightful, others—especially in excess—can be annoying and distressing for your household. Understanding the underlying causes and managing those issues can help you create a more peaceful household for both you and your cat.