Stay with us here, because we know how this sounds, but RSPCA NSW has created an album of music designed to help make life a little sweeter for cats around the country.
Using soundscapes designed to calm your feline and aid their psychological health — again, we're being totally serious — the latest effort from Cat Ballads: Music To Improve The Lives Of Cats is I Need You (Cat Mode), which features all the sounds your kitty loves to listen to, including soft purring, birds tweeting and sweeping soundscapes.
The efficacy of the track, designed not only for the benefit of cats left at home during the day but those living stressed existences in shelters, is apparently backed up by scientific reasoning, with RSPCA NSW veterinary scientific officer Dr Jade Norris explaining in a statement:
"Researchers suggest that because cats further develop their hearing after birth, sounds in the womb may not be important to cats, unlike human babies who can hear their mother’s pulse in the womb for four months before birth.
"In this regard, the pulse-like tempos used in human music do not have the same effect on cats; it seems much more appealing for them to hear the purring their mother would have made post-birth or the suckling of nursing."
The organisation — which is preparing for an influx of up to 500 felines a week due to the onset of kitten season — based its idea off recent research showing that felines show "an intuitive biological response to sounds based on their brain development and vocalisations", especially music that mimics the frequency and tempo of natural species-based communication.
They've even created a video clip for I Need You (Cat Mode) to further please your furry friend, stacked full of images like balls of yarn, tins of food, scratching posts, mouse toys, head scratches and more.
The wider five-track album, featuring a range of power ballads and cultural spoofs (which we imagine only the human listeners will appreciate), carries a more serious message than most of this lets on, which is of course the importance of desexing, microchipping and protecting your li'l buddies. (Track titles include ditties such as Desex Me Before I Do Something Crazy and Get Me Registered.)
RSPCA NSW is offering $10 microchipping services this month; see its website for more information.
The truth is, this is all important because 75 per cent of cats in Australia are categorised as being homeless, with more than 35,000 landing in shelters, pounds and rescue groups in NSW annually. Where half of dogs who are lost eventually find their way home, as low as 3 per cent of cats are returned to their owners.
Cat Ballads will be available from this week free on SoundCloud and via catballads.org.
Grab your feline friend and watch the clip for I Need You (Cat Mode) below.
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