One reason why people dislike cats is because they generally seem to be disinterested in everything that's going on around them, be it the TV or human affection. Maybe that's because none of this stimulation has been tailored specifically for them.
But that has all changed. Scientists recently discovered a way to get felines into the groove, but it's not so great for humans.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the University of Maryland have finally composed music that cats will wag their little tails to. Their study, which was recently accepted into the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science, compared how cats responded to human music to music created especially for them. It turns out cats do respond better to their own special music versus the tunes that humans listen to.
So how did the scientists know that the 47 domestic cats they studied were feeling the music? Did they dance around like the Rum Tum Tugger and Mister Mistoffelees? Not quite. When the music tailored for the cats played, they rubbed the speakers from where the music was coming, but when the human music played, they didn't respond this way.
This is significant because cats have scent glands on their bodies and past research has shown that they use these glands to signal that they have claimed something or someone, according to Discovery News. As the cats rubbed up against the speaker, that indicated they were trying to "claim" the music.
OK, cool, but what is "cat music," exactly? Is it this? Or this? Or this? No, unfortunately it is none of those things. It is something much more horrifying that sounds like that old cliche of cats dying, although no cats or any other animals were harmed during the making of this music. It was just created with traditional instruments and the human voice.
Just as humans have different musical genres, this music created for cats includes "Kitty Ditties," which incorporates animal calls, "Cat Ballads," which include the sound of suckling to soothe kitty listeners, and "Feline Airs," which include purring. With strange instrumentals on top of all of that, this "cat music" just sounds like something you would see in an experimental art film or what Shia Laboeuf probably has on his iPhone. You can listen to three short samples of the tunes over on this website.
Now this music will definitely come in handy when the inevitable cat nightclubs open, but until then, the researchers see this music as helping cats that may have grown accustom to human interaction, such as those in shelters.
"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," the study's lead author Charles Snowdon of the University of Wisconsin told Discovery News.
Well, what are you waiting for? If you've got a cat, turn up these tunes to 11, and let the head rubbing begin.
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