“Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second": Maurice Ravel succinctly identifies the elements that melodies touch in the human soul with this sentence. Music graces the background of both ordinary and significant moments in life, helping to frame memories. Joy, melancholy and serenity are just some of the feelings it can arouse, but what happens to our feline friends when they listen to music? Recent research by the
University of Lisbon sought to answer this question.
Does the therapeutic power of the music work for cats?
Music is known to have therapeutic benefits for humans, especially for patients undergoing surgery, by alleviating the pain and stress they are subjected to.The same is true for cats apparently, as demonstrated by the results of a study published in the
Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery. It seems music, especially classical music, can help our feline friends cope with major operations conducted under general anaesthetic.
The experiment
To reach this conclusion, the team of researchers examined
12 female cats undergoing surgery for
sterilisation, recording their respiratory rate and pupil dilation at various points during the anaesthesia.The cats were fitted with earphones through which they were exposed to two minutes of silence (as a control) then played one of three different pieces of music. There were three music genres: classical music comprising
Adagio for Strings (Op. 11) by Samuel Barber, pop music,
Torn by Natalie Imbruglia and rock music,
Thunderstruck by AC/DC.During this musical experiment, the feline patients were most relaxed listening to the
classical music, less so with the pop music, while the rock music produced higher signs of stress. The results of this small study suggest that listening to some musical genres in the operating theatre, especially classical music, could allow for a reduction in the anaesthetic dose thereby limiting the risk of undesirable side effects.
Miguel Carreira, lead author of the study, backed up his theory that playing music around animals was therapeutic by talking about his own professional experience: “In the operating theatres of the faculties where I teach and in the private veterinary medical centre where I work, background music is always present because it gives the team, pets and their owners a sense of wellbeing."
Even the cat is stressed out! The things that unsettle our beloved pets are not work issues, love woes or money problems like ours rather factors affecting their normal...
Dogs in winter, just like cats, adapt to the changing temperatures. Dr Maria Grazia Calore, veterinary doctor and expert in pet behaviour, illustrates the physical and...
Is a cat still a predator in this day and age? Yes, the domestic feline has retained many elements of its wild nature and this has had repercussions on all aspects of...
The hydrolysed animal proteins that often pop up among the ingredients of dog and cat food often make people talk about them. We are frequently asked what they are, what...
Where do cats hide themselves? It's a recurring question for owners often driven to distraction by concern or just impatience for their feline to show up. In fact, cats...
The commonly used idiom ‘the eyes speak volumes' is normally attributed to human communication, however this expression also rings true for our beloved feline friends....
How to give medicines to our dogs and cats? We've just been to the vet and if we want our pet to heal, we have no choice, we must give them their meds. It is therefore...
Cats in winter, like humans, are affected by the change of temperature . Dr Maria Grazia Calore, veterinary doctor and expert in pet behaviour, explains the physical and...
