The headline might read like we are scoffing at the idea of music written specifically for cats, but if you think about it, why shouldn’t Mr. Snuffles get to enjoy soothing sounds while he eats?
Some clever folks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison agree, and have put their minds to the task of discovering what sort of sounds cats enjoy. Using that research, they have developed three songs specifically designed to appeal to Mr. Snuffles’ ears and those of his peers, composed by musician David Teie.
“Our music is based on feline vocal communication and environmental sounds that pique the interest of cats; it is written in a musical language that is uniquely designed to appeal to the domestic cat,” it is explained on the Music for Cats website.
Dr Charles Snowdon, who was in charge of the project, told Discovery News that they used certain parameters to develop the tunes.
“We looked at the natural vocalisations of cats and matched our music to the same frequency range, which is about an octave or more higher than human voices. We incorporated tempos that we thought cats would find interesting — the tempo of purring in one piece and the tempo of suckling in another — and since cats use lots of sliding frequencies in their calls, the cat music had many more sliding notes than the human music,” he said.
The three songs sell for $0.99 each, and the team plans to make more music after receiving suggestions from humans on how their cats reacted.
“We think of cats as highly independent of their human servants, but there is some research showing that cats experience separation anxiety, which is greater in human-raised cats than in feral cats,” Snowdon concluded.
To read the whole ‘Cats Prefer Species-Appropriate Music’ study, on which the music was based, click here. If you are curious as to what the songs sound like, click here to listen to a sample of Spooky’s Ditty, here to listen to a sample of Cozmo’s Air, and here to listen to a sample of Rusty’s Ballad.
[Source – Musicforcats.com, Image – Charlie Fripp]
