I know this sounds weird, but my cat’s meow is broken. She sounds like she is rusty. She had a clear, high-pitched meow, but all of a sudden she can barely make a sound. She acts normal, she just can’t meow. This has been going on a few days, and if it isn’t better by Friday, I will take her to the vet.
Is there a kitty equivalent to laryngitis? I have had cats all my life and have never heard of anything like this. We have a new kitten in the house, but otherwise, nothing has changed.
It could be an infection, maybe causing mucus to build up in her throat? I’d take her to the vet just to be safe.
Call Roto Rooter. They’ll get that clog out.
This site says it could be anything from a simple respiratory virus (which is curable and causes only temporary voice loss) to something as serious as cancer or FIV. Get her to the vet. I hope she’s ok!
This happened with one of my kitties some years ago. Apparently there was something going around. It happened so long ago that I can’t remember whether or not they put her on meds, but she did get better and lived to 20 years of age.
Another online buddy of mine has a kitty who temporarily lost his meow. The vet could find nothing wrong with him. Weeks later, his meow returned–louder than ever.
Good luck with your kitty.
I had a cat who had a totally silent meow until she was about 5 years old, when suddenly she found her voice. It was weird.
are you missing some meows?
I have lots of extras, which I will gladly donate to you.
Most of 'em start at about 4:00 a.m…
(yes, there’s food in her dish, and yes, she knows it. She just has some extra meows to get rid of. )
so take your cat to a vet…but in the meantime, enjoy the quiet… 
No, no, take mine! They don’t start until five! 
One of our cats really can’t meow very well, and doesn’t try very often. Most of the time when he does, he just opens his mouth and sometimes a tiny bit of sound comes out. Sometimes nothing comes out. He’s fine in all other ways (well, that’s debatable, I guess). Since you have a normally vocal cat though, I’d get it checked out just to be safe.
It could also be a buildup of fluid in the lungs, which might be caused by (or might cause) heart or kidney troubles. Get kitty to a vet ASAP, to be safe.
Could be a fish bone stuck. Vet.
Definitely not a fish bone, unless the kitties have developed those opposable thumbs. In that case, we are all in trouble. They are strictly indoors, dry cat-food only cats. The thing that keeps me from the emergency vet trip (and trust me, my threshold is low–I made one on Monday when I stepped on my kitten, who is fine, btw) is that Sophie acts very much herself. She eats, sleeps, chases the birdie, purrs, poops, pees, all the regular cat stuff. She doesn’t seem to be in the tiniest bit of distress. Her meow is just funky.
If you’re looking for things to worry about, it could be a cyst or tumor on her vocal folds, I suppose. Could be respiratory allergies, could be a kitty cold, could just be she’s learning another language! 
Definitely take her in if it’s not better within a couple of days. Cats, unlike whiney humans and even social dogs, will generally try their damnedest NOT to look sick. There’s no benefit - in the wild, if a solitary animal looks sick, it’ll attract predators and get eaten. Only a few social animals can expect to get help from their pack or herd if they look sick.
Our 12-year-old cat all of a sudden got a “broken” meow, but he seemed fine in all other respects. It turned from a regular obnoxious meow to a barely audible sound like a rusty gate being opened, only very, very quietly. He’d open his mouth, and you could barely hear the meow.
One day, though, he was sitting at our front door that has a large window in it, and was meowing as usual, his “I exist! Here me roar!” meow. It seems that in his late age he just added a new word to his vocabulary. His usual meow and his pitiful “Please feed me, I’m about to starve” meow. We have absolutely no idea where, if anywhere, he picked that up.
Please, I’m not saying not to worry. I just wanted to point out a case where a “broken” meow really wasn’t.
The fuzzy black land shark who lives in my house is constantly shifting vocalisms in and out of his repertoire. His new trick is to hide somewhere in the house and emit a long, low, pathetic sound somewhere between a groan and a plea: “o-o-o-oh-woa-a-o-o-o…” When he first did it, I went running to see what was wrong, and he was sitting in the middle of the floor, looking at me with his “howdy” face. I think he just likes hearing himself make noise.
Consider yourself lucky your cat hasn’t learned to bark. The small yappy dog that lives next door has been giving our girls lessons, so now they sit in the front window and bark at the crows. A truly weird sound, that.
Keep us informed as to what the vet says. We worry.
Another wierd sound is the “hunter chatter noise”.
But yes, keep us informed.
The Monster caught some form of kitty laryngitis a few months ago and lost her meow for a few days too. Instead of jumping up and down on me at 5am squealing, she jumped up and down on me at 5am croaking. No other ill effects, and it came back after a few days. (Vet, though, goes without saying.)
I was totally sure that this was about the same sort of thing that our cat does. He has a meow - quite a loud one, in fact - but it’s sort of…fractured. Where other cats say “Mow”, he says “Ma-ow”, “Mrt-ow”, or when he’s deeply incensed, “Prat-at-at-et-at-at-ow”. We joke that he’s not really hungry until he’s managed to produce at least six syllables.
Since I’m here, I’ll join the throng and ask that you update us when you can.
Thanks for all the concern, guys! I will call the vet tomorrow AM and see if they can fit her in.