The Types of Noises That Attract Cats

Cats

Cats are famous for having better low-light vision than humans. However, it is important to note that their senses differ from our senses in a number of other ways as well. To name an example, cats have excellent hearing, which serves them very well as predators that can be predated upon. The shape of their ears serves to amplify incoming sounds. Simultaneously, their ears can rotate to focus on the sources of incoming sounds. On top of that, cats can even hear higher frequencies than most mammals, which includes humans.

Cat Sounds

Generally speaking, cats have a reputation for being less social than their canine counterparts. However, it would be a serious mistake to think that they have no interest in such things whatsoever. In fact, it is very common for cats to take an interest in the sounds of other cats. Of course, the nature of that interest can see a fair amount of variation depending on the exact sounds being made. For example, cats tend to use meows as a way of communicating with humans rather than other cats, but it is still very much possible for other cats to become interested. Similarly, other sounds with positive connotations include purrs, thrills, and chattering, which can cause other cats to become interested as well.

Prey Sounds

Cats are enthusiastic predators. They have to be because they are obligate carnivores, meaning that they have to eat meat to survive. Their wild ancestors couldn’t exactly count on humans to feed them, so they had to handle everything on their own. Even now, cats tend to be interested in the sounds that prey animals make. One example would be the sound of rodents making their way across the floor. Another example would be the sound of birds chirping out in the open. Fortunately, if people want to make use of these sounds, they should know that there are plenty of cat toys and accessories that mimic them. Something like a toy mouse that squeaks when batted, chewed, and otherwise played with can be very entertaining to cats for this exact reason.

Nature Sounds

Apparently cats tend to enjoy nature sounds in the same way that humans tend to enjoy nature sounds. Examples range from the sound of running water to the sound of falling rain. Presumably, this is connected to how nature sounds would have been a normal part of the environment in which their ancestors lived, which would have been true for our ancestors as well.

Certain Human Sounds

Curiously, people have observed that cats like certain human sounds more than others. For example, they tend to react better to high-pitched human voices than to low-pitched human voices, which is why they tend to react better to women calling them than to men calling them. Similarly, cats seem to like long vowel sounds, which explains why people calling, “kitty, kitty, kitty” works so well so often.

Cat Music

As mentioned earlier, a cat’s hearing is quite different from a human’s hearing. Thanks to that, it is possible for them to get irritated by things that we can’t even hear, so it makes sense that they can react very differently from our music than we do. Amusingly, people have actually gone to the effort of making cat music that is specifically designed to be appealing for our feline companions. Moreover, they seem to have had a fair amount of success by paying attention to how cats vocalize as well as the sounds made by the kinds of animals that cats hunt.

Sounds That Cats Have Learned to Associate With Positive Things

Cats aren’t as good at drawing connections between things as we are. Even so, they are still capable of drawing connections between things to some extent, which can cause them to adopt a wide range of behaviors that they weren’t born with. There are a lot of cats out there that will come when they hear the sound of a tin can opening because they have learned to associate that sound with mealtime. Similarly, there are a lot of cats out there that will have the same reaction to a rustling bag, whether because they think it means mealtime or because they think it means playtime.

What Are Some Sounds that Most Cats Dislike?

Since there are some sounds that cats tend to like, it stands to reason that there are other sounds that cats tend to dislike. For starters, there is a claim that a lot of cats don’t like the sounds emitted by our electronics. This is because our electronics emit certain sounds that we can’t hear but our feline companions can. As a result, they might not bother us but they are very much capable of bothering cats. Unfortunately, it is hard for people to pick up on when this happening because it is difficult to draw connections between cat behaviors and something that we can’t sense ourselves. Moving on, cats tend not to react very well to hissing sounds. This is something that makes a lot of intuitive sense. After all, cats hiss when they want to tell another cat to back off. If that doesn’t get the desired effect, it is common for the cats to feel threatened enough to go on the attack. As a result, hissing isn’t exactly the friendliest sound in a cat’s understanding of the world. Indeed, it is the exact opposite. Due to this, interested individuals might want to be careful with aerosol sprays, rustling plastic bags, and other items that can sound like hissing. Besides this, cats also react poorly to loud noises. This should come as no surprise to interested individuals. After all, anyone who has ever listened to the sound of a particularly loud or a particularly shrill fire alarm will have firsthand experience of why loud sounds can be painful and unpleasant. The issue is that this threshold is even lower for cats than it is for humans. Even the sound of a thunderclap, a motorcycle, or a vacuum cleaner can be too much for them, particularly since their status as predators that can be predated upon means that they can be quite skittish by nature.

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