Do cats like it when their human guardian sings? There’s a video on the newsflare.com website called: Connecticut cat has the sweetest reaction when its owner starts singing. This young woman has a really nice voice and her cat loves it. I can’t show you the video (can’t embed it here) but trust me her singing sends her cat into paroxysms of delight! I searched online for some more information about this and immediately discovered another video in which a young woman sings to her cat. With great respect to the woman, and I think that she would agree, her singing voice is poor and her cat agrees! Her cat jumps across her and hits her in the face. Pretty unpleasant actually, but here we have two polar opposite reactions from domestic cats to humans singing. What is going on?
We don’t know and have to guess! In the two examples that I have mentioned it probably has something to do with the quality of the person’s voice. A melodious and pleasant voice is more likely to be attractive to a cat and one which is squeaky and grating.
However, cats do have an ear for their own style of music. That’s why we have composers writing music specifically for cats. It’s partly guesswork but without delving too deeply into this difficult topic, the sort of music that a cat likes is different to that which human like. It sounds like classical music. On that basis, a nice human voice might not be nice to a cat which obviously muddies the water in this analysis.
When you see a person singing with their cat and observe the cat’s reaction it isn’t just about the sound of the person’s voice. There are things in the background going on such as the relationship between the person on the cat which we don’t know about. We don’t know the environmental conditions under which the cat lives. There may be antagonism in the cat’s life from a different source.
And in addition, we have to factor in the cat’s character. Some cats might be predisposed to liking the human voice and music compared to others. And of course, the relationship between person and cat is critical. A cat will like the voice of a person to whom they are close but will be fearful of the voice of a person who is hostile to them. This is probably the biggest factor.
In a close human-cat relationship when the human sings the cat hears her voice. He likes the sound of her voice. It makes him feel good so he approaches her and snuggles up. This background influence is probably the most important as to whether a cat responds positively or negatively to human singing.
SOME MORE ON CATS AND MUSIC:
