Crystal in Costa Rica: I have an awesome cat that does unusual things, and I’m wondering if you can help me. Our cat, Simba, is approximately nine years old, and we’ve had him since he was a kitten. He’s experienced his share of health challenges over the years, but he seems to be fine now. Overall, he’s a very stoic indoor-outdoor cat that comes and goes as he pleases, but we always make sure he’s in at night.

We’ve noticed over the past couple of years that he has picked up the strange habit of chewing on weird items, such as Styrofoam pool noodles. At first, I thought it was odd but thought nothing of it. Over the winter, we noticed that he has started chewing off all the insulation from the copper plumbing pipes. We told him not to do this anymore, and the behavior seemed to stop for a while. Then we noticed he was chewing on the piping over the hot water tank. He actually jumps up on the tank to chew on the insulation around the pipes.

Simba’s developed another odd habit that we find to be very irritating. At night, when we are all settled in and watching TV after supper, Simba starts yowling loudly. It is much louder than just meowing, and he walks around in front of us. We assumed he wanted attention, so I picked him up and loved on him. Sometimes this doesn’t seem to be enough, and the meowing gets louder and more persistent. Then he goes down to the basement.