My cat, Ollie, is very “verbal” as some cat fanciers like to say. He has a HUGE vocabulary beyond the usual meow, purr, caterwaul, and HISS!!!! Ollie has little high pitched chirps when he wants to be fed, which are quickly followed by whiny and nagging meows if he is not immediately fed. If we wait much too long for him, the whines turn into the most pitiful cat cries you’ve ever heard.

Ollie is very territorial, which makes for a frustrated existence for him, being that he is an indoor cat except for when he sneaks out. When he gets out, he is often gone for hours, coming back home the next morning with roughed up fur and in more recent years, broken canine teeth! Ollie also loves to hunt and before we got screens on our windows, he used to hang half of his body out of the window and try to catch birds that flew near the house. Over the years, we came home twice to a pile of bird feathers in the kitchen!

This morning, I heard a new noise, a growl! He saw a cat in the front yard and was pacing back and forth on the window sill. Now it wasn’t the low moan warning noise that cats make when they are getting ready to fight. This was low and rattling, almost like a little lion!

I don’t know what’s gotten into him today. He also started the day running down the full length of the hallway and jumping half way up the walls with his claws out. He left scratch marks on the trim around the bathroom door way.

I keep asking John to email the vet and see if any of these recent changes in behavior (I’ve spared you from some of them because they are gross) are a result of side effects from his medication. (And yes, I could contact the vet myself, but I am already in charge of my own and my daughter’s medical care.)I tend to think that an almost 12 year-old cat with multiple medical issues would be a little more sedate than this wild jungle cat who is slinking about my house.

Here’s Ollie with his mouth closed for a change today. He started chattering away again as soon as I finished taking this picture.