What good it will do to post on a thread from 10 years ago, I don't know; it was however, listed at top of "Similar topics" on a current mood swing thread and if this thread was not important it wouldn't be at the top of the list would it.
There is information about the issue on this cat care blog, http://www.wayofcats.com/blog/
And there is the question, is it mood swings or response to disagreeable stimuli that we don't recognize as being disagreeable to them?
Quote:
About
I didn’t grow up with cats. I came to cats as an adult, without a lot of encounters or experience. Then I married a man with cats, who welcomed me to his home by accompanying me to the shelter to pick out one for myself.
And I came home with two.
We didn’t have a lot of money, but cats were a hobby we could afford. I never intended to accumulate so many. Honest!
But I was also incapable of turning away when a cat was in need, whether it was a starving cat at the end of our driveway, a kitten who howled at the door during a rainstorm, or the last kitten in the box in front of the grocery store. The one who wasn’t going to get a home of any kind.
This is how we got a lot of cats. This is how I observed, experimented, and began to formulate something that was not very well described or understood. It was in the very beginnings of what was called “psychological dog training.” I began to adapt it to cats.
I found out how to form partnerships with cats. How to tell how a potential cat or kitten would work out in my home, and how best to rehome them when they would be happier in a different situation.
For fifteen years, I was able to run my rescue, until my life melted down. But I rebuilt it, even though it took a shape that did not have room for as many cats as I’d been used to having. But in the space between, the rise of other cat rescues and no-kill shelters shows how much progress has been made.
I decided I would share what I’d learned, so other people could enjoy their cats, thrill to their attempts at communication, and love them with all their heart.
It has turned into an incredible, many-layered, enterprise, in which I offer my cat advice in a variety of ways.
Look for Way of Cats in a variety of mediums: podcast, video, blogs, and books.
I can’t help it. I love cats.
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"There are a thousand things that can happen when you go light a rocket engine, and only one of them is good."
Tom Mueller of SpaceX, in Air and Space, Jan. 2011