I hope you’re as excited as I am today.
The good kind of excited, I mean.
Not the bad kind, sometimes described as agitated, anxious, nervous, flustered, perturbed, disconcerted, unnerved, all the way up to completely freaking out.
There are lots of ways to help a human in such a state, but fewer ways to calm a cat who’s upset, especially if you’re on the way to the vet and that’s one of the cat’s least favorite places to visit.
Researchers at Louisiana State University decided to see if they could help, by testing whether music could help cats relax during their checkups.
There’s actually been research along these lines already. Cats apparently are more chill around classical music than they are around pop or hard rock.
But this study wanted to see if music specifically geared toward cats was even more effective.
And there is cat-specific music out there. It tends to be slow, ambient music with purring and other cat-ish sounds embedded within.
The study tested the idea on 20 cats, who each paid three visits to the vet.
On one visit they each heard classical music, on another the cat music and no music at all for the third.
The cats had lower stress readings around the cat music than the other options.
Often when cats are calmer, so are their owners. And if Spotify is putting our podcasts for dogs, why not also have ambient music for cats?
Speaking of music: yesterday was Justin Bieber’s birthday, and if you forgot to celebrate, why not go to the Stratford Perth Museum in Stratford, Ontario?
That museum, in the singer’s hometown, has an exhibit called “Justin Bieber: Steps to Stardom,” featuring memorabilia and other artifacts courtesy of his grandparents.
The Bieb himself has visited the exhibit, and said that he was pleasantly surprised that his grandparents had kept all his stuff!
This music calms cats the best, study finds (Treehugger)
How a small-town Canadian museum became a shrine to Justin Bieber (The Outline)
Patreon backers are to Cool Weird Awesome as Beliebers are to Justin Bieber
Photo by Mikey G Ottawa/Street Photographer via Flickr/Creative Commons
