Cats dig music too, just not your music. Here’s what’s on their playlist.
Cats are kinda like next-level hipsters. . .but more mythical. Think about it: They love extravagant laser shows, they’re more interested in dusty bookshelves than five-tier kitty condos, and they’re probably definitely not impressed with your iTunes library. Good news is, you now have an opportunity to redeem yourself—at least in the music department.
Thanks to a team of three researchers, cat-approved music is now a real thing! The research team, which was comprised of two psychologists and one music composer, came into their study with a reasonable hypothesis: “In order for music to be effective with other species, it must be in the frequency range and with similar tempos to those used in natural communication by each species.”
From there, the team matched natural vocalizations of cats with music of the same frequency range. They even tested out a few different, kitty-friendly tempos! Lead researcher, Charles Snowdon, revealed to Discovery News: “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.”
But before putting their feline-friendly music to the test, the researchers first played two human tunes for their 47 participants. And let’s just say, Bach’s “Air on a G String” and Gabriel Fauré’s “Elegie” didn’t go over too well. However, when two feline-friendly tunes were played, the majority of cats responded quite well. In fact, the cats felt that the music was so compelling, they rubbed their faces against the speakers! In other words, SUCCESS!
The study has since been published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science. To read further details, check out the full study here.
Now, grab your nearest feline friend, play these kitty curated samples, and please report back to us as soon as possible. You can download three different types of cat songs right here.
There’s Cat Ballads. “based on the purr cycle and suckling. . .associated with reward and comfort for the developing kitty brain.” There’s Kitty Ditties, “a quick and lively song that includes musical representations of environmental sounds that have been designed to arouse the cat’s interest and curiosity.” And finally, Feline Airs, “based on the 29 beats per respiratory cycle of the purr.”
Turn it up.