The nightly parade with the toy: It could be a prey thing. A friend’s cat liked to catch flies then show off to the other cats, walking about the house doing that mewling thing with the fly buzzing away in her mouth. I’ve known other cats parade about miaowing when they’ve caught something, and had an old tom cat who would act like this with food he’d stolen.
As a teenager I had a cat, Tabby, who would do the sudden rage thing. She had a couple of triggers though. One was piercing sounds, including music. She was a cat who loved to listen to music* but I learned not to play my Steeleye Span records. She hated Maddy Prior’s voice and would fly at me yowling with mayhem on her mind. More than once I ended up curled up in a ball in the corner. She never actually did me any harm however. Not so with her other trigger: any time she failed to recognise human body parts. My Mum used to sit with her arm trailing by the side and to the back of her armchair. If Tabby came in and saw* just the arm* she would stalk and attack it, leaving serious scratches on more than one occasion.
*Really loved music, normally it made her very loving and soppy. She adored being sung to especially. if she wouldn’t come in at night when she was called my Dad would stand on the front doorstep and sing All things Bright and Beautiful to her.
)} It sounds like a distress call, so, of course, it gets me up and going to make sure she’s ok. And , as usual, all is ok.