In 2016, Universal Music announced it would be the first major label to release an album not for human consumption. It’s for cats. The creator of Music for Cats is David Teie, an American cellist, composer and music researcher. On the Music for Cats record, Mr. Teie plays the cello, accompanied by colleagues from the US National Symphony Orchestra.
But let’s start with this:
Do cats like music?
Years ago we had one cat, our beloved Ludlow. We hated leaving him home alone, even during the day when we worked. If we left him overnight, which didn’t happen often, it wasn’t food and water we worried about, it was loneliness. We knew he missed us as much as we missed him. We plugged in a portable radio and played classical music, very softly. We liked to think it comforted him. Now Toby and Marnie live with us. Even though they have each other, we still hate leaving our cats alone, even for one night.
When Steve plays the guitar, our cat Marnie frequently settles next to him, and listens.
David Teie from University of Maryland created Music for Cats
Mr.Teie produced Music for Cats after he and Chuck Snowdon, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, researched and discovered cotton-top Tamarin monkeys responded to music created for them, whereas they were unresponsive to human music. Mr.Teie decided to expand the experiment to other animals.
“There are not very many cotton-top tamarin owners out there.” Mr. Teie acknowledged, “so we decided if we were to go out and spread the word, spread the music, we should go with a species we hang around with a lot.” He eliminated dogs because there of too many variations in the breeds. “I was worried about having to write terrier music and labrador music and so on – it would have slowed things up,”
Cats were selected, and studies proved the music to be calming for most cats, especially neurotic, nervous or cats abused in the past.
Music For Cats was self-produced after a Kickstarter campaign raised almost $250,000. Universal noticed and signed Mr.Teie up; the album was released in the UK in October, 2016. Mr.Teie admitted, “I was very excited about it at first, then not excited about it … was I signing my life away to somebody else? Now that it is all done I’m very excited again.”A spokesperson said the label was “thrilled to be part of this world-first project” and predicted “Music For” albums could follow for dogs and horses.
Mr. Teie stated, “…animals don’t give two hoots about our music and they really shouldn’t,” he added, “everybody knows what music is – and animals are not included. If you really look into it, what’s silly is the idea that only one species could have music available for it. I am hoping that in a hundred years from now people will have to be taught that music was once only for humans.”
Hopefully, people will attribute this fascinating and helpful research to David Teie, the pioneer for species specific music. Mr. Teie concludes, “As a matter of fact I’m allergic to cats, [but] I’ve grown from being an admirer to a genuine cat lover now, but I’m still allergic.”
my kitty care does not endorse any product discussed on The Scratching Post, nor does my kitty care receive payments, or any form of compensation from any company or product on my kitty care.
