Okay, my cat Joey is freaking adorable. I love him more than I love most people. The only thing that bothers me is that he does this thing that I simply do not understand and I would love if someone could help explain it to me. He stands in a corner/facing a wall/standing in the bathroom/etc and meows loudly. Over and over again. He doesn’t appear to want anything because if I go to pet him or fill his food dish or whatever he goes right back to the yowling. My mom thinks he may just like the echoing sound. I haven’t asked a vet about it yet but I think I may have to make a call tomorrow as it is just getting weirder and weirder. He did it as a kitten and I always figured he would grow out of it but it still happens fairly regularly. I am pretty sure it isn’t a hearing disorder or anything like that because he responds to sounds that I wouldn’t think he would respond to if he had hearing problems (shaking the cat treats, faucet being turned on, etc.) So tell me dopers, do any of you have cats that do this? If so, have you figured out why the hell they find this behavior to be entertaining?
I believe he is engaged in the difficult process of chasing off the Invisible Mice that threaten to overrun your home. Without his dedicated vigilance and carefully-worded threats, you people would be infested with them. Offer him gifts of gratitude.
Seriously, yes, I’ve had cats that did that. Most did it for a while and then quit. I found at least one would only stop if I yelled ‘stop it’ at him loudly. It was like he wanted me to yell and, once I did, his job was done.
Well. My cat meows incessantly at times, for no good reason. Sometimes he’ll pace from room to room and other times he’ll just sit there staring at me: ''MEOW. MEOW. MEOW!" At first I panicked: ''What’s wrong are you hurt do you need fed is your litter box clean WHAT’S WRONG???"
I spoke with his former owners and some other people who have owned cats. They didn’t appear alarmed at all, just shrugged and said, ‘‘He’s just talking to you. Some cats like to talk.’’
I would suspect (based on my scant three months of pet ownership and having a vocal cat myself) that there is nothing inherently problematic with your cat’s behavior. He probably just likes talking to himself–or perceives himself to be talking to you.
Now when Merlin talks to me I think it’s kind of sweet. And so I talk back. 
So he just likes talking loudly to himself for no apparent reason? I didn’t think pets could pick up behavioral traits from their people! 
My cat did the same thing. Very odd, but she seemed fine otherwise, if a bit quirky.
My main concern is that it could possibly be related to some sort of hearing problem because I know people who have had cats go deaf and they tend to stand there and scream simply because they can’t hear themselves. I don’t think it could be a hearing problem but I would be a pretty crappy cat mom if I continued to ignore it and it turned out to be a serious issue. I appreciate all the input though!
Cats are pretty good at vocalising. I wouldn’t worry- I have acquired a six month old kitten 
- that is a story in itself.
How old is Joey? I’ve heard that older cats can sometimes yell a lot, particularly at night, because they get a bit disorientated and lonely. Does he do this when he’s around you, or when he’s in another room on his own?
Joey is just about 3 years old. I can’t imagine he would be lonely since we have 2 other cats in the house and he gets lots of love (not to mention sleeping in the bed with me!) He yowls when he is in the same room with me, he will go into the other room and yowl, he doesn’t seem to have a preference. Sometimes it is obvious that he wants something and that is fine, but sometimes it appears that he just likes the sound of his own voice. The times when it confuses me he seems to be meowing at the wall while standing in a corner or when he is in the bathroom or kitchen, so I think he might just like the sound of the echo. I haven’t ever had another cat that does this which is why I am kind of concerned but if this is pretty par for the course with other cat owners I won’t be nearly as worried.
My cat also gets a case of the mews occasionally. He’ll be in the same room as me and my fiancé, or more often, in another room, and he will start a few minutes of urgent and loud mewing. Quite loud mewing; it sometimes resembles howling, but not the agressive howling cats sometimes do; more of an urgent howling. We’ve ruled out lack of food or a litterbox that needs cleaning as possible causes. There just seems no reason for it. He *can * be distracted by play though: he stops mewing and starts playing when I dangle a rope on the floor in front of him. So maybe the mewing says: “I’m bored”.
But anyway, like other posters said, it seems just a personal quirk of that cat. The other two cats don’t mew like that and they don’t respond to his mewing either, although they usually are attentive to what Sran (that is his name) does and says.
It could be that his hearing is not that great as pointed out above, his vision is not good, or he has a mental condition all 3 could make him confused.
OTOH there may be something making noise or even movement inside (from living or non-living sources - but to him they are living sources) that wall that he can perceive but you can’t. He wants to know what that is.
Check for tiny hidden microphones. He may be reporting in to headquarters.
My Oreo does that sometimes. Except in her case she’ll dash from room to room, attack a piece of lint, stop and meow quizzically for a few minutes, and then do it all again. Cats are weird.
Lenny does that. I think it’s because he likes the accoustics. In my old house we had a sweet spot in the front hall where even a whisper was amplified with a nice hint of reverb. He paricularly loved singing in that hallway, in that one spot. It sounded neat. Lenny picks sopts the he thinks will have the best accoutics to hear himself sing. His present favorite is a corner that has a table over top, so he his sinigng bounces off the two waal, underside of the table ,a nd floor.
He’ll when I was a kid singing a long with my recods (yes, back in the dark ages when here was vinyl), I sometimes held the record sleeve in front of my face because the accoustic made my off-key singing somehow “cooler”.
Think of it as a cat karaoke machine.
I used to live in a split-level house. One of my Kitty Overlords liked to stand at the base of the steps and meow, thus bouncing her loud yowling throughout the house. I’d yell at her, she would run upstairs, and all would be well.
I always likened it to a human’s wanting to hear echoes (shrug)
Well, you won’t let him sing in the shower, so he has to get that echo effect somewhere!
If his hearing is fine, then it’s just a quirk he’ll probably grow out of. Our two just hit 2 years old, and have started talking incessantly. I find myself having conversations with a cat while performing my morning rituals. Very strange.
Take him in to the vet and have his hearing checked. If nothing else it will calm *you * down.
If you have noticed any other behavioral changes that accompanied the yowling, I would consider getting some bloodwork done - yowling, along with getting “restless” and not being content with laps anymore were the only signs we had of one of our kitties having a thyroid problem.
Of course, even with her thyroid stuff under control, she still continued the yowling - she would go behind a door where it REALLY echoed!
I had a cat that did weird stuff too, Lincoln. He used to follow us to our busstop almost daily (except in inclimate weather) as kids and once he even got on the bus to check things out. He walked up the steps of the bus and just looked around. He seemed satisfied so he turned around and walked back home. He once attacked a German Shepard and chased it out of our yard.
His weirdest quirk however was that once everyone was in bed, he would walk into everyone’s room to make sure they were in their beds and then go sit at the bottom of the staircase leading upstairs to where the bedrooms were and just MEOW loudly 4 or 5 times. It was like he had tucked all the people in, and was stating “Bedtime, Bedtime and All’s Well!” If by chance you weren’t in your room, he would wait there in your room until you returned, or until everyone started to get up.
I called the vet today and explained it to him and he said it isn’t health related. He said that he thinks it is because Joey can sense that we are moving. I am in the process of packing up my stuff to move across the country so the house is full of boxes and such. The vet thinks he can tell something is going on but he doesn’t know what and he can’t “talk” to anyone about it so he is simply talking it over with himself, so to speak.
My Trudy does that daily. It’s always when my wife and I (or, more to the point, everyone in the house) are in the living room. She’ll start howling in the kitchen, like “HEY! Where is everyone?!?!” We yell her name a few times, she comes in, all is well.
Joe
I’ve had two cats (both Ragdolls; maybe it’s a breed quirk!) wander outside when it’s hot, or raining, STAND OUT IN IT (getting baked/drenched), and meow.
It’s a disgruntled meow.
It states, quite clearly, that as far as they’re concerned, It’s. Just. Not. Good. Enough.
Likewise, both of them are/were known to just stand in a room and meow. It seems to be the equivalent of whining that they’re bored, but can’t think of anything to do about it. Sort of an ‘I’m out of sorts. I don’t know what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it - and right now* I’m not seeing it**!*’.