Mary Allen
In the Disney film “Aristocats” the furry friends sang “Cats need an awful lot of music”, but do the velvet paws really like the jazzy sounds from the cartoon? Scientists found out: that cats really like special cat music, but they don’t really like human music.
Human children can already hear when they are born and presumably hear their mother’s heartbeat even before that. When people listen to music whose beat and frequency remind us of the heartbeat, we find it pleasant. Kittens, on the other hand, hardly hear anything when they are born and only get to know the noises and spoken language of their conspecifics in the weeks that follow. Among other things, music for cats should be tailored to this.
Do Cats Like Music for Humans?
People enjoy all kinds of music – with and without lyrics, loud and soft, fast and slow – with all kinds of instruments. The human heart beats at 60 to 70 beats per minute and is found to be particularly calming. Cats, on the other hand, relax best to sounds that match the tempo and frequency of the cat‘s purr — and that’s 1,200 beats per minute. The purring noise still sounds calmer and not more hectic to a cat’s ears than the human heartbeat because it sounds more even.
Loud music with aggressive vocals and relatively large amounts of lyrics, as well as a fast, choppy rhythm, such as heavy metal, is usually what cats dislike most. Jazz isn’t for her either, as it’s too restless and they play too many different instruments. Cats are most likely to get something out of classical music – at least they don’t seem to mind.
Composer Creates Music for Cats
About a year ago, the musician David Teie set himself the task of composing music, especially for cats. He focused primarily on sounds and noises that the furry friends find relaxing and confidence-inspiring; in addition to the comforting purr of the mother cat, this is the sucking sound of the little kittens drinking milk. In addition, the cat‘s hearing perceives much higher pitches than the human hearing. That is why Teie incorporated high-pitched harp sounds into his compositions, reminiscent of birds chirping. So that the music for cats is also pleasant for human ears, he has also added cello and violin, which the velvet paws at least do not consider disturbing.
In a study published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science in 2015, scientists played classical music to cats on the one hand and sound specially composed for them on the other. The velvet paws didn’t react to the classics, they didn’t seem to care. However, 77 percent of the house tigers reacted positively or relaxed to the cat music. They approached the loudspeakers, sniffed them curiously, and sometimes nudged them with their heads.