Cat Talk: A Nervous Cat's Meow of Concern

Some cats meow all of the time. They meow when you walk in the room. They meow when you start to open the cat food can. These are all easy to understand and seem to relate to the current event. A nervous cat talks out of the blue and it usually means something is up.

I discovered recently that my nervous cat, the one that runs when approached by the other cat, or a human, would on occasion approach me meowing incessantly and all the talking I did made it worse. The meow became louder and at one pint she would follow the meow with a bite.

I stumbled upon the answer through my daughter in law's conversation. She too has a nervous cat. Her cat like mine is nervous about eating too. Nervous eaters don't stay near the bowl when someone or another cat approaches.

My daughter in law mentioned she had to go get cat food before her cat got agitated because the dry food container was hal full and the cat could see that. She said he always got nervous when the food dropped to half way. At the time, I thought, now that is odd. The container was semi transparent and she mentioned that he could see the food level dropping below a comfortable level.

Later that month I observed my cat acting up and meowing. When I would get up from where I was during the meowing session, my cat would stop meowing briefly and turn to walk out of the room. If I didn't follow instantly, she began the meowing, only this time it was louder.

I remembered what my daughter-in-law said. So I walked toward the food area and the cat followed and became quiet. I have two containers for food in the feeding area. One was FULL and one was half full. It has always facinated me that one container was preferred over the other. But, today, I wondered about the cat meowing over a container that was half-full while the other was filled to the brim. So I decide to watch and see.

I later saw the cat eating. She had chosen the half-full container. Then I noticed that the other cat went in and ate, also out of the half-full container. This container was the one furthest from the door. Each cat seemed to prefer one container over the other.

I decide to switch the containers. I put the full container furthest into the room. I noticed that at first the cats would still eat out if the container that was already half-full but then began to switch to the container furthest into the room.

Back to the meowing. It stopped. Until the full container dropped to the halfway point. Then "nervous Nelly" started meowing all over again.

My son had an idea. He said he was going to cover the semi transparent portion of the container so the cat could'n see when it was getting empty. That sounds like good idea. Unless you are the human that uses the semi transparent area to see when it needs filling!