Pop culture obsessives writing for the pop culture obsessed.

A “music for cats” Kickstarter is doing (un)surprisingly well

The internet loves cats, and that is a fact. Some parts of the internet like dogs, but cats are easily the dominant internet species, surpassing even humans. It probably has something to do with internet people spending a lot of time indoors (like cats), while normal people sometimes spend time outside (like dogs). The internet actually loves cats so much that something can become a viral hit simply by being related to them, no matter how weird or silly it is.

One Kickstarter page is learning this firsthand. The page is titled “Music For Cats,” and it was started in hopes of raising $20,000 to pay for an album of music specifically designed to appeal to cats. To come up with the songs, a composer named David Teie had to utilize another thing that the internet loves: science. Teie developed a theory that certain songs are more comforting to humans because their drumbeats match the pace of a mother’s heart beat they would’ve heard in the womb, and he later used that theory to create music specifically designed to appeal to monkeys. Now Teie wants to turn this into an actual business, which is why he has turned to cats.

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Making music for cats is more complicated than monkeys and people, though, because apparently “felines establish their sense of music outside of the womb.” So, using only actual instruments—so none of those keyboards that make cat noises—Teie recreated sounds like “the chirping of birds, the sucking of milk, or the purring of their mother,” then turned those into music and “matched it to the frequency range [cats] use to communicate.”

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If this sounds a little silly, then you need to recalibrate your silly detector. Music For Cats—which, again, only wanted $20,000—is currently sitting at over $198,000 pledged from over 8,300 backers, with still four days left in the campaign. That means Teie is really going to make his album, and all of the cat-obsessed internet people will have an easy gift to give to give to their pet on Christmas. For anyone who isn’t convinced, you can listen to samples and order copies of the album at the Kickstarter page.

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Also, here’s Ron Livingston as Keyboard Cat, which is definitely relevant:

[via The Guardian]