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REPORT | Composing For Cats — Felines Prefer Music Written For Them Alone, Study Shows

By Anya Wassenberg on February 25, 2020

Cat on a piano (Photo : Brett Jordan from Pexels)
Cat on a piano (Photo : Brett Jordan from Pexels)

Music can keep cats calmer at the vet’s office, a new study shows — but it has to be music written just for them.

While the field is still relatively new, there have been several recent studies that demonstrate a link between animals and music — and often classical music in particular. Veterinary offices and police dog kennels the world over play classical music to soothe dogs and keep them calm and happy. But cats, as everyone knows, are a different story.

A study published in the February 2020 issue of the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery examined the effect of music on the stress levels of cats in a veterinary clinic. Researchers at Louisiana State University exposed domestic cats to three different situations to analyze the results. One group was left with no music, another heard a piece by Gabriel Fauré, and a third listened to music that had been written specifically for cats.

The Fauré composition, Élégie, is performed by Alban Gerhardt and Cecile Licad on Hyperion Records. The piece was chosen in part because the tempo is similar to that of a resting human pulse rate, or 66 beats per minute, and the frequencies are within the human vocal range.

What is music for cats, you might ask?

Music written for cats uses the same type of sounds and range that cats use in their own vocalizations. For example, cat vocalizations are typically about two octaves higher than that of humans (55–200 Hz).

The idea behind it is that the emotional centres of a cat’s brain develop very early, soon after birth. Cat-specific music emulates the sounds of purring and suckling that kittens hear at that stage of life. Those sounds are woven into the frequency range and the tempos of cat vocalizations to create cat music. The piece chosen for the study was Scooter Bere’s Aria, a cat composition by David Teie on Universal Records.

Other studies have already shown that cats at home prefer feline-specific music. How would they respond in a clinical setting with a brief period of exposure, and a lot of other distractions?

The cats were exposed to the music for 10 minutes in the waiting room prior to a venipuncture and full exam by two veterinary students without the owner’s present. They measured respiratory and heart rates, temperature, and a number of other indicators. After two weeks, the cats came back, but were assigned to a different group, and tested all over again.

Researchers measured cat stress levels by a series of markers, including whether there were reduced neutrophil to lymphocyte ratios (NLRs) in the blood during a physical exam. A series of “stress scores” were assigned both before and after exposure to the music, or not, as in the case of the control group who heard no music. As you’d expect, the stress levels were about the same for all three groups prior to exposure to the music.

Afterwards, however, the cats clearly responded to the music written just for them, as opposed to either silence, or classical music. NLRs in the blood were unchanged, but all other stress indicators were lowered when the cats were exposed to music written for them.

NLR levels are important because they measure the effects of cortisol, the stress hormone, in the blood. The circulation of neutrophils increases in the blood as the body responds to stress. The researchers noted that other studies have indicated that, in cats, neutrophils return to normal levels about three hours after a stressful event. The 20-minute period of their study was therefore too short to allow for any reaction to the music.

While the idea of cat music may seem whimsical, the concerns behind it are quite serious. Any cat owner will attest to the fact that veterinary visits cause stress and anxiety— both for the pets and their owners. The researchers are optimistic about the potential for cat-specific music to make visits to the vet calmer and less stressful for everyone involved.

“Our results suggest that a cat displaying less anxiety while listening to cat-specific music is more comfortable in its surroundings and is easier to handle.”

#LUDWIGVAN

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