I am a new cat owner, so bear with me.
So my cat gets the zoomies about twice a day (he is 6 mo. old, neutered). He has immense amounts of energy. He will just run all over the place bouncing off walls. I recently noticed he will run away from me if I step towards him when he is in these moods. I've slowly started chasing him, and he seems to like it. But his response is very mixed.
When I chase him, he never takes a logical route. So, support that he's not actually scared. BUT, he does hide under the bed. Not all the way under, but behind the comforter. It is somewhat difficult for him to get under the bed fully. That being said, he could also run under the couch if he were truly scared. And then, if I walk around the corner, he will come back, walk around the corner, and stare at me. Then slowly approaches me like he is trying to hunt me. Sometimes, once he gets to the bed, I stop chasing and just watch. Then he leaps out from under the bed and goes nuts across the apartment.
Another super confusing thing is that sometimes he will run at me like a psycho. Or approach me like he is hunting. Then, I walk away and turn around. He then runs at me, tail puffed, running sideways like he is possessed! And I know puffing out the tail generally means they are frightened! Then the sideways walk means a fight? But if I approach him this way, he lets me pet him and settles down instantly. At these times, I sometimes run away from him. Another time I ran at him, and he quite literally jumped off my leg like parkour and raced across the apartment.
It really seems as if he is engaging me to chase him. He will approach me and then just turn and run. But I seem to get somewhat mixed signals with the partial hide under the bed and the attack-mode tail puff with hackles raised. I also will run at him when he is not in his weird moods and he just stares at me.
We hang out all the time, I live alone, we go on walks together, and he sleeps in my bed. So we are super close. He is literally sitting next to me right now watching me type this. Nope. Now he is attacking the fake mouse like a savage even though I have run with him for the past HOUR. Is he just a weird cat? Or am I doing something wrong?