Cat music

Should vets play "cat music" when they want to handle cats?

Yours truly believes the devil is in the details (were the handlers listening too?), but if you want to see the research, the paper is here.

Snowdon and Teie recently concluded that cats listening to music in their homes prefer music that was specially made with cat vocalizations, with preferred tempos and with normal vocal frequencies as the primary considerations. Cats responded to music positively by orienting and approaching speakers playing cat music more often and quicker than to speakers playing classical music. The cat music played contained melodic lines based on affiliative vocalizations and rewarding sounds. These melodies are interpreted as more likely to be effective if the goal is to calm an agitated cat. The thought and musical design behind composing cat-specific music was based on the idea that the development of the emotional centers in the brain of the cat occur shortly after birth, during the nursing stage. Because purring and suckling sounds are common in this developmental stage, these sounds are layered into tempos and frequencies used in feline vocalization to create cat specific music.

And yes, the students were in the room for part of the "treatment"

After that, two veterinary students proficient in physical examination and venipuncture and trained in the study’s methodology, performed full physical examinations, including turgor test, mucous membrane examination, capillary refill time, oral examination, body condition assessment, abdominal palpation, pulse and heart rate, respiratory rate, cardiopulmonary auscultation and rectal temperature, all while the auditory stimuli continued.

And blood tests for stress didn't show any effect from different types of music.

And--they used 25 cats. Look at the overlap...

Want to have a listen? There's a snippet on this page. I checked YouTube, and a random sampling of "cat music" doesn't sound a lot like that, it's more human-soothing. Though I suppose if you are hyper, your cat(s) might pick up on that.

My take? "Cat music" sounds like it might be real, and it probably doesn't hurt at the vets, but getting hoisted and jabbed by strangers is always going to be stressful.