The question of whether cats appreciate music is an interesting one, and we still don’t have definitive answers despite attempts to make music for our furry friends and study the way they respond to sound.
We’ve mentioned the ongoing efforts to make tunes for felines on this blog before, and previously experimented by playing composer David Teie‘s “Music for Cats“ for our brave volunteer, Buddy.
Excited by the possibility of music specifically designed for cats, and a study in the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery that found it had a calming effect on the species, we queued up a track and watched the Budster’s reaction:
“Using Buddy as my test subject, I went to Youtube, selected the track Cozmo’s Air from “Music for Cats” and sat back, expecting Bud to start nodding his furry head at any moment.
Instead his ears pricked up, did their radar-dish swivel toward the speakers, and his eyes went wide. As the song gained volume and intensity, Bud’s ears and whiskers snapped back and he let out a clearly anxious “yerrrrrrrrrrppp!” I tried to calm him down, to no avail, and a second track didn’t improve things.
He wasn’t having it.”
Over at Catster, Christopher Bays writes about his cat, Olga, and her relationship with music.
Olga “has listened to classic rock, jazz, blues, classical, heavy metal, punk (or new wave?), and accordion tunes from Hungary, and it all sounds the same to her,” Bays concludes.
Noting that our tastes change as we age, Bays said he’s thankful Olga wasn’t around during his teenage punk and metal phase (ditto), and notes she’s not particularly interested in any sounds coming from electronic devices, with the exception of the roaring MGM lion. (Fun fact: The famous “lion’s roar” is actually a recording of a tiger played over footage of a lion yawning. The creators apparently felt lions don’t sound sufficiently badass enough.)
Bays points out our cats don’t exactly have control over what we play, and while that’s true, if you’re a genre-hopper like me, you’ve probably observed your furry friend’s reaction to various types of music.
Given the fact that the small amount of research done so far indicates cats do respond to tunes — and the existence of music-loving animals like Kiki and Snowball — I think felines probably are capable of enjoying the organized, rhythmic arrangements of sounds we call music.
I can’t say whether a favorite track can unleash a wave of emotion, nostalgia or energy the way it can for us humans, but I’ve played a lot of music around Bud and even played music for him on my guitar and keyboard.
He seems very comfortable with old jazz, soul and funk, he comfortably loafs when I’m in the mood for classic 90s hip hop, and he seems to tolerate the prog rock of Coheed and Cambria well enough. More recently he’s been on a 90s nostalgia trip with me: Blues Traveler, the Spin Doctors, Nirvana, Oasis, Better Than Ezra, Letters to Cleo, Ash, Weezer, Blur, The Roots.
And he seems especially chill in the sonic presence of synthwave, also called retrowave, an EDM-inflected genre that evokes nostalgia for an era that never really existed outside of 80s retrofuturism. It’s highly rhythmic, with steady 4/4 beats and vintage synthesizers cranking out arpeggios that rise and fall like waves, which may be a source of comfort to a species that likes things just the way they are without any big surprises.
Have you noticed your cats responding to music? What’s your kitty’s favorite genre or song? Is there anything they clearly don’t like?
Pain In The Bud 