After lots of research and experimentation, musician/composer David Teie has written a bunch of music for cats, and they like it. According to The Washington Post, Teie, a cellist with the National Symphony Orchestra, wrote two songs that, according to a peer-reviewed article, were hits with cats:
Back in 2008, Teie wrote two songs that would have been major hits on the cat-music Billboard charts, if there were such a thing. “Rusty’s Ballad” and “Cozmo’s Air” prompted positive responses from 77 percent of cats in a study published in February in Applied Animal Behaviour Science. That’s pretty impressive, considering that just 38 percent responded positively to classical masterpieces such as J.S. Bach’s “Air on the G String.”
After giving up “animal music” for a while, Teie threw himself into the project with relish, eventually producing a CD called “Music for Cats”:
The trick, he says, is to use instruments both real and virtual to create approximations of cat sounds, and then create compositions that are pleasing and novel to the animals.
“If you play an actual purr, the cats will habituate to it,” Teie says. “What I’m trying to do is tickle their brains so they think, ‘I don’t know what that is, but it gets to me. It makes me feel good.’ ”
Teie sampled the sound of a snare drum and sped it up to the pace of a purr. That was good enough for his early music, but as he studied the waveforms of actual purrs, he realized that each beat was in fact two sounds, like a very quick heartbeat.
“I couldn’t hear it, but I knew cats could,” he says.
Teie then created a new instrument on his computer by contouring an organ sound to mimic the opening and closing of a cat’s vocal cords.
Layered on top of the musical purrs were sliding songs of kittens, who mew up into the ultrasonic range. He set up a makeshift recording studio in a metal shop and, on a borrowed violin, played kitten songs two notes at a time — the maximum number of notes he could play in a row on the unfamiliar instrument. Later, he stitched the fragments together and raised their pitch to the cat’s preferred listening range, about two octaves higher than most human music.
In Prague, he had his breakthrough.
“I realized that I could write music that would provide a shared emotional experience for cats and their humans,” he says. “I could write cat music that I’d also enjoy listening to.”
In his first-generation cat songs, Teie had included cello parts merely to make the music palatable to human ears. For his EP, he began writing cello melodies that interlocked with the tunes in the high cat-hearing range. The result: airy, calm music that might pass for a modern classical composition or a film score — if it weren’t for that insistent background purr.
Below is a sampling of Teie’s cat music, and you can hear more in the video at the Washington Post site, and at the website where you can get notified when the “Music for Cats” album is available for purchase. In the meantime, you can sample three iTunes for cats here, and, if you or your moggie likes them, buy then for only 99¢ each:
I’m sure our musician/readers will have an opinion on these tunes.
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At The Dodo you can read about and see a nice line of custom cat handbags by a Japanese designer named Pico. I’m not sure where you’d carry these things, and, at $500-$700 they aren’t cheap, but they are remarkably catlike. Just the Christmas present if you’re rich and have friends who love cats. Here are three, and you can see more on Pico’s Twi**er feed:
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Finall, several readers informed me that Koko, a 44-year-old gorilla at the San Francisco Zoo, famous for her ability to master several thousand words in American Sign Language, has received a gift of two new kittens. As SFGate reports,
Koko, who is famous for communicating through sign language, first asked for a pet cat for Christmas 1983 and has had several kitten companions through the years. The latest couple are grey tabbies named Ms. Grey and Ms. Black. Ms. Grey was selected by Koko; Ms. Black used her big kitten eyes to coerce Koko into taking her too.
If you only have time for ten seconds of video today, go to 1:40 when Koko signs “put on head” for her human companion to put a kitten on Koko’s head. Gorillas: Their life dreams are just like ours.
It’s amazing that such a huge and powerful animal is so tender with kittens. And, for your delectation, here’s the video:
h/t: Phil, Barn Owl
I was so sad when I read about how Koko cried when one of her cats died. She signed “cat sleep”.
That was me. I’m now sad that WordPress makes me fill in my details each time. Must find short cut on iPad. Must.
I have an auto-sign-in to Gravatar. shows up mostly here, but occasionally in other places that use the same ID system. Firefox on Linux, Android and from a memory stick on Windows.
Stupid WordPress ate my comment but I think it was because I had a blank name and email.
I had written that I felt sad when I read how when one of Koko’s cats died, she cried and signed “cat sleep”.
The gorilla catlings seem to age through several months in the video.
There’s a P.T.Barnum-ism about the supply of lambs for laying down with the lion. I’m sure that’s not what actually happens, but this Koko does seem to go through a lot of kittens.
Ah, Koko’s Kittens explains. The first (1983-84) got car-splatted. Sad, but it happens ; “can’t herd cats” etc. The second in about 1990, they’re a little obscure about and overlaps with the third, Smoky, who “lived with Koko for almost 20 years, before passing on of natural causes.” (Do we need irrelevant euphemisms like “passing on” here?)
And since 2010, “Koko had a series of kitten visits, thanks to the Humane Society.” reading between the lines, the Humane Society thinks Koko is a bit old for actually adopting another kitten permanently. Given the apparent greying of her hair, they may have a point.
Looking around the Koko site about their facilities, I see bits of assorted industrial equipment – drainage pipes, lifting strops etc – being used for “enrichment” items. I can just imagine what the risk assessment forms for that – and for anything else to do with gorillas interacting with humans – looks like. [Shudder!]
See? It’s not just human shoulders that make perfect perches for cats, but gorilla heads — clearly demonstrating a deep evolutionary connection.
Every feline deserves a primate perch.
b&
Watching Koko reinforces the feelings I have when I go to a zoo which has large primates. They look and act like prisoners in a jail cell. It is probably anthropomorphic on my part, but I just feel bad for the gorillas – they seem bored out of their minds…
I played the cat music for my Gus and he was certainly more interested my iPad than I’ve ever seen him. He especially paid attention to the pulsing sound towards the end. I rather like it myself!
Watching Koko with the kittens is very touching. She’s so gentle picking them up.
Those cat handbags are impressive but also creepy!
I agree! Especially the ones that are just heads.
Many years ago, while helping my child with a school project, we discovered that the cats adored classical Chinese music!
Interesting different perspective on Koko:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/08/koko_kanzi_and_ape_language_research_criticism_of_working_conditions_and.single.html
Indeed. I knew about the debates over just how speech-like her communication is and how much Patterson “interprets” Koko’s intentions. But there are other allegations there that are almost creepy.
It’s not really much like the “modern classical” music I’m familiar with. I’d say it’s more in the New-Age area.
But then again someone who’s much more familiar than I am with New Age music might not agree.
🐾🐾🎶
The article gets one thing a little wrong. In Classical music (and I think this might be put in that category rather than New Age as it reminds me of some music by composers like John Adams and David Lang) a work without a vocal part is not called a ‘song’, but a ‘piece’. I don’t think the mewing of the kittens or the cello solo counts as a vocal part, either, so it’s a piece, not a song.
The music at 0:45 on is remarkably reminiscent of the intro to Pink Floyd’s ‘Time’.
Link: see from 0:40 on…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rNr2pBexMU
Maybe the Floyd should emulate the notorious ‘Stairway to Heaven’ lawsuit and sue. Or, maybe not bother…
cr
I thought the music was…pleasant.
Interesting how relaxed the kittens are about being picked up by a gorilla; I guess gorillas are similar enough to the other large apes domestic cats have evolved with.
I found the music unpleasant in that it used a lot of high notes. This could be because I had a migraine though (when don’t I?) and I hate certain sounds during it.