Does anyone else have this problem? I have recently acquired a cat, and every time I play the cello it leaves the house! I know that I'm not very good yet, but hadn't anticpated this reaction. The cat stays in when play the piano.

The cat leaving isn’t a bad thing, one of my cats tries to hang on to my daughters cello bow when she playing. It’s not easy to detangle a bow form a cat that thinks its play time and is all teeth and claws. The same cat often helps with piano practice as well.

It must be due to the frequencies/harmonics that the cat can hear, and dislike more on the cello than on the piano. Or is he telling you something !

The cat is very considerate, and realizes that you need to be left alone to practice efficiently

Possibly it remembers that cello strings used to be made of catgut ...

Our oldest cat just takes one horrified look at me as I pick up my cello and heads for the hills (very unflattering). The middle cat lives outside permanently (she sprays urine into power sockets, so has cooked her goose in this respect, thank goodness for safety switches or she really WOULD have cooked herself...) so doesn't care. Youngest cat not too bothered about the cello but when son and I start playing the recorder, she miaows piercingly and comes up in a very threatening way - have not worked out if she is complaining about the frequency or if she thinks there is a bird trapped inside and have not been game to continue in case she attacks. Son on the other hand is very sweet about my cello practice and has requested I practice while he is going to sleep as it makes him feel happy (dear child).

Wolfnotes

Cats ears are designed to hear mice rustling in leaves up to about 20 feet away from them. They hear at higher frequencies to us too. My vet once told me they can hear up to 60,000 hz or more. (studies have been done apparently).

My cat leaves when I sing, and on the rare occassions when I play recorder and clarinet. He jumps up on the piano keyboard when I play the higher notes too. He can hear them better than I can at the moment!

We have this problem as well

Our cats like all of the instruments, but do take exception to certain composers - our old cat didn't like the Prokofiev Vision Fugative no 14 at all, my friends dogs would howl at Hindemith (mind you, they've got a point )

Flute teacher's dog was singing along (sounded like wolves howling) during yesterday's lesson!

I agree with what Tom says

My cat (or rather ex-cat) chewed through a gut string on one of my cellos. We heard a strange noise followed by the cat exiting the room looking very guilty and with a gash across her nose. When I looked at the cello it was very obvious what had happened from the snapped string and from the other teeth marks on the string. I hope that the string was gut and not cat gut...

This just made me realise that the cat also leaves the house when I play Elgar on the piano

My teacher's cat always used the rush out of the room when I started playing, unless it was Bach - then she stayed. She also liked sitting in my case as soon as I got my fiddle out.

my cat used to leave too (in the beginning), but after about a year of me playing she started staying and now never leaves when I play (I play violin).
Don't know the answer:
- I got better and 'nicer to listen to'
or
- She got used to it

An urban myth there. Gut strings were (still are!!) actually made from SHEEP gut.

Animals hearing range goes far higher (in frequency) than a human and they are very sensitive to this. Like very young babies and small children, some sounds are quite literally painful for them to hear - hence why children often cry and cover their ears and animals feel the need to leave the room, or even the house entirely!

My cat always sort wanted to go out of the room when I played the violin, but would quite happily lay across one of my feet while I played the cello.

I would howl at Hindemith too.

My cat has never liked piccolo playing but tolerates flute playing. He is not impressed at Sax playing at all, when I first started he left the house, now he just leaves the room so perhaps the sounds are not quite so painful now.

Hindemith

To be honest, just your cat leaving is nothing - when I practise both cats and my entire family get out of the house fast!! They react like this ->

My cats often come to listen when I play. Usually they settle down just behind me or sometimes look on from halfway up the stairs. The other night I was playing some Scott Joplin and I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the tabby (Tigger) was having great fun, rolling around on his back!

I like to think he was break-dancing!

In reality, we have absolutely no idea what effects these sounds and vibrations have on animals. Their bodies are equipped with senses (sight/smell/hearing/touch) far more delicate than those of a human.

When we think they are enjoying something (a cat or dog rolling around on their back while you play a musical instrument), they might in fact be finding the entire experience rather uncomfortable to their hearing or body.

People laugh and think it's funny, but the reality for the animal themselves might be very different.

My teacher at RCM, Jack Steadman told me his cat liked to sit in his violin case when he practised.
I also took my first dobermann, though not a great music lover, up to college a few times when I only had a piano lesson to attend ... and he's probably the only dog who has slept through an entire 1st orchestra rehearsal?

My current dobermann absolutely loves music, and he comes for comfort if we have Wagner, Mahler or Strauss playing. He's been a great critic of my pupils as well, groaning quietly to himself ( and anybody else listening ) when violinists were at the early stages. Pupils knew they'd made the grade when the dog chose to enter the room lie down and listen when they played!

It goes to show that like people, animals also have musical preferences

My cat used to tolerate my clarinet playing but always left the room dring daughter's violin practice (which did'nt continue for very long....) and would scarper out of the house and even out of our garden if she saw my sax case being fetched out. (It's true that I'm not particularly good on sax but really.......).

[quote name='AmandaL' date='Oct 9 2009, 01:46 PM' post='882537']In reality, we have absolutely no idea what effects these sounds and vibrations have on animals. Their bodies are equipped with senses (sight/smell/hearing/touch) far more delicate than those of a human./quote]Amanda, I think you're onto something here - and perhaps it's not not just the sound the cat objects to. My mum has a sweetheart of a 20-year-old cat who is quiet as a mouse and deaf as a post (hasn't answered to a call for years and leaps into the air if you approach him from behind and then touch him). He happily sits next to people playing the piano but he yowls when I play certain things on the viola - that wretched 3rds scale just as an example. I can feel the vibrations in the air myself and I really like it - but unfortunately the cat doesn't seem to find it pleasant. Maybe something to do with the vibrations from my out-of-tune-ness grating against each other?

Well, just as humans find some sounds disturbing or uncomfortable, other creatures from the animal kingdom also feel the same. The definition of 'pleasant' is subjective, hence why we don't all like listening to the same thing. Take those smells, sounds, or vibrations and place it into the world of cats and dogs, and every one of their senses is in the region of 200 times greater than that of a human. Imagine how easily overloaded their body must feel and their need to escape, ie. leave the room or the house.

Though not directly related to domestic pets, human sound polution is how whales and even dolphins become 'deafened' by sonar emissions from so many submarines and ships. Because WE can't hear it, doesn't mean to say other creatures can't - sonar is how whales and dolphins communicate to each other, assess their location and in the case of dolphins, seek out their food! How distracting is that? It must be like trying to sing to yourself while having to listen to a din of background noise at maxumum volume.

As an example of just how distracting it must be for animals, imagine what it would be like for your ears to be able to 'hear' radio signals without needing a radio! You'd be bombarded with a constant wall of sound made up of all the transmissions currently being made. Now imagine how uncomfortable that would be if there was no way to shut those sounds out, other than to move to an area where radio signals were difficult to detect. This is what many animals experience when we start scraping/blowing/hitting what we call musical instruments. Just as some sounds can be used to attract animals, others can have quite disturbing effects on them.

I can understand that my cat might like some sounds and not others, and that one cat is happier to sit by the piano than the other when I'm playing (the tabby often comes and settles down, close by, when I play, the other is not so bothered). But if his senses are so sensitive, why does he remain close by when I hammer out some heavy piece of Beethoven or Chopin at max volume? He has the choice of going out if he wants.

Maybe I've deafened him?

I'm going to start an experiment to note when he comes and leaves to try and determine whether he has any identifiable likes or dislikes

*looks for some modern discordant rubbish music*

When I said deafened, I didn't mean literally. I'm using it in the context that the sounds you want to hear are being drowned out by so many similar extreneous sounds.

To some extent animals do have a preference to what they will tolerate or not tolerate in levels of audible sound - much like humans. However although you might be playing at max volume, if there are insufficient ultrasonic overtones reaching his ears - sounds which he would very likely find unsettling - then he's probably happy to stay.

Just like the other things, heavy and max volume may not disturb one cat, but does another. I guess cats are as different as people in what they do/don't like, what they find comfortable or uncomfortable, what they find enjoyable/tolerable/too darn loud!

OldCat was out of the house when any recorder was played.
NewCat will happily be in the same room (and pretend to sleep) with tenor and below, seems indifferent to treble, will be downstairs or outside with descant.

Mind you, recorder has limited dynamic range...but I'll try my best forte on her this evening to see what happens