According to a new study, cats are highly responsive to ‘music’ specialized for them, while they generally ignore more regular music.

The study was done by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and published at Applied Animal Behaviour Science. The lead author was Charles Snowdon, an emeritus professor of psychology.

Snowdon said, “We are not actually replicating cat sounds. We are trying to create music with a pitch and tempo that appeals to cats.” He added that the first step to make cat music is, “to evaluate music in the context of the animal's sensory system. So it's vital to get the pitch right. Then we tried to create music that would have a tempo that was appealing to cats.” One sample was based on the sucking sound that made during nursing, while another was based on the tempo of cats’ purring.

The researchers played four samples in total: the two cat samples mentioned above and two samples of classical music. The samples were played at the homes of 47 cats after a period of silence.

On analysis, the cats were found to respond more positively towards cat music than towards classical music. The average positive response time was 110 seconds, while the response time to human music was 171 seconds. Snowdon noted, “Some of [the cats] needed to wake up and pay attention to what was going on, and some were out of the room when we set up.”

The rate of aversive responses was almost the same to both types of music. This study followed a 2009 report by the same researchers on the emotional responses of a monkey towards especially composed music.