Do you leave music on for your pets when you leave the house in the hopes that they won’t get lonely while you’re gone and start shredding your furniture? Apparently you’re not alone! Now there has been an actual scientific study to measure what music appeals the most to cats.

Two psychologists from the University of Wisconsin, Charles T. Snowdon and Megan Savage have teamed up with David Teie, a composer from the University of Maryland to put University resources to good use and compose music that will appeal to cats.

This initially sounds like a bit of a pointless exercise but when you look into it a bit further, the results were actually quite interesting and have the potential to make a big difference to animals kept in captivity.

As part of the whole exercise, Teie composed music which used pitches, beats, and tempos which are known to be appealing to cats and it was discovered that the moggies were noticeably intrigued by the music composed especially for them. Sadly for human artists, they appeared almost indifferent when they were played music which was composed with humans in mind.

This findings are probably largely unsurprising. Cats are generally known as quite intelligent creatures and we know that listening to certain types of music can be soothing to us so why shouldn’t it be the same for cats? Felines that were played the music that was specially composed for them have been known to actually cuddle up to the speaker when music is being played for them.

The experiment is also not simply restricted to cats. Erin McCarthy who reported the experiment’s findings said: "The music is part of a larger project to create tunes for many members of the animal kingdom; the team has also created music for tamarin monkeys, which had a soothing effect on the creatures. The researchers hope that this species-specific music will enrich the lives of animals in captivity."

This is a large and possibly difficult task to undertake but serves to show the sheer power of music on the listener’s emotions and apparently, that effect is not simply restricted to humans.

Until more species specific music is created, I’m stuck playing Katy Perry for my budgie who to my dismay, has an extremely limited taste in music.