It's science

Scientists are studying my cats. Finally. Where have they been all this time?

I noticed a flier when I was walking out of class a few weeks ago. Some psychology students were recruiting cats and their owners for a study into the effect of music on cats. Apparently cats find human music annoying. Some cat owners (not me) play classical music for their cats when they leave them alone, but this is actually stressful for the cats. Some composer had made specially-designed cat music. Now these students are seeing if the cats like it. Excellent.

So the two girls came over this morning. We sat in our bedroom and they played two control songs of regular classical music and two cat songs. One cat song actually had some purring noises and the other had suckling noises (really). The girls videotaped the cats and made notes. Maddie (the smaller cat in the above picture) spent most of the time under my bed, though she did emerge during the purring song. Abby (the larger one, and the love of my life) did seem to like the purring song, but during the suckling one, she scratched at the door and we let her out. Both cats were actually gone during the final human song, and we all waited to see if they would come back.

Science is not easy when you are studying cats.

They are doing the same experiment with 58 other cats. Hopefully we and our cats did our part to advance science. I would really like them to figure out how to clone them, because I don't know how I am going to live without my Abby.

--MM