“If you think that Bach is your cat’s composer of choice, then you must not have heard about the latest feline-friendly compositions from Charles Snowdon and David Teie,” writes Rebecca Stein on Monday (3/2) at classical radio station WQXR’s blog. “In a recent study that has been accepted for publication in the Applied Animal Behavioral Science Journal, Snowdon and his colleagues have developed a groundbreaking genre: music for cats. The University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of psychology and zoology teamed up with fellow Wisconsin psychologist Megan Savage, and composer and cellist Teie to craft pieces that they say are pleasing to cat listeners in a manner that traditional ‘human music’ is not…. Researchers created songs with tempos and other musical elements that are based on the suckling and purring noises of cats.… Why cats? … Because ‘dogs vary a great deal in terms of size and voice according to breed, but cat breeds are more similar in size and in pitches of their voices.’ ” A separate article in Sunday’s (3/1) Herald (Glasgow, Scotland) reports on a recent University of Glasgow study showing that “classical music can help to calm and reduce the stress levels in dogs.”
Posted March 5, 2015
