very vocal cat

Question
i adopted my tortoise shell cat from the anti-cruelty and they estimated she was about 2 years old.  they had no background of where she came from, but she had a tattoo of a blue 45 in her ear which is confusing to me since i have no idea why a typical cat would be tagged.  anyway, I've had her about 4 years and she is a good cat besides her meowing.  i noticed immediately when i brought her home that she was excessively vocal, and was told by several professionals that she should calm down in a few weeks, but that never happened.  sometimes i know that she wants food or attention, but a lot of times she has plenty of food and runs away when i try to come close to her.  the worst part is she will go through phases of meowing really loud in the middle of the night for long periods of time and won't stop.  any suggestions?  

Answer
Hi
well this is a tricky question to answer confidently as their may be a few things contributing to it.

It could be her breed. Some breeds are just more vocal than others, Siamese for instance. She may have one of these breeds in her blood line.

She may have learnt this behavior previously, i.e she knows it gets her attention of food etc and so she uses it to make you take notice of her.. Some cats crave human contact more than others. Unfortunately if this is the case this could be an impossible learned behavior to change as she has done it for so long. You could try ie,.e ignoring her when she criers and paying her lots of attention when she doesn't. but its not easy and can take a long time.

I assume she is spayed? if not then this could be the cause.

Also night time is the natural time that cats are active and so vocal ie calling to other cats outside to say hay i'm here and this is my territory. You could try playing with her about 45 minutes before bedtime and then feeding her just before bedtime. Also making sure she has lots to keep herself busy if she does wake up during the night.

Sorry i could not be more specific, as I say there are so many things which can be involved.

I have a web page on my site all about different cat meowing behavior which you may find of further interest here /cat-meowing.html

best wishes Kate