This Cat-Loving Composer Is Giving New Meaning To The Phrase ‘Pet Sounds’

A Kickstarter campaign has been started to create a new genre of music: music for consumption by animals, instead of humans. “Species-Specific” Music is a concept that David Teie, a cellist for the National Symphony Orchestra, has been working on since 2009. He started out with a vision to create music that elicits “feelings”  from different animals based on the sounds that comfort those animals, and began with cats.

Teie began by working with animal scientists to study what sounds created “feelings” from the felines. As humans, we encounter music and rhythm while in the womb well before we are ever born. Cats, born deaf and blind, will hear their first sounds after birth. Because of this, their mother’s purr is often what the cat will respond to musically. Cat music, then, is created with sounds like purrs, as well as other noises that make cats’ ears perk up.

It would be interesting to ask David Teie about Meow the Jewels to see if cat noise instrumentals behind human voices has a similar effect as his new project. Either way, as long as the internet’s obsession with our feline friends continues, people will always be looking for ways to make their cat happy, and music specifically for cats is the next step in the process.

(via Slate)

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