A new streaming internet service offers music specifically designed for cats to calm them down.
The product, called Cat Calm, was a mixture of composer-cellist David Teie’s 2016 release “Music for Cats” and new music he created with the aid of spray bottles, a toy football and scratches on canvas.
Teie told AdWeek, “I had to take my own feelings out of the judgment. That was really very hard to do, since normal composing is essentially an intuitive process. I was certainly going for a relaxed feeling and sympathetic expression, but in a ‘language’ that cats understand.”
Derek Blais, associate creative director at BBDO in Toronto, told AdWeek, “We wanted to do something impactful that reached beyond typical marketing.” BBDO staffers tested the product on cats; Blais said, “The cats loved it, and it really helped them stay calm during the loading, car ride and unloading on the way to the vet. The goal is to get as much media coverage as possible and have people sharing Cat Calm Radio on social.”
Oddly, Teie is allergic to cats, according to Calgary CTV News. Teie told them:
The first test was with cotton-top tamarin monkeys. We took it to the University of Wisconsin, they did research there, and it turned out to be effective. It was the first music to be effective for any other species than human. Not many people have monkeys so the next idea was cats. … It took me a long time to figure out how to make it work as well as it needed to work. … It took five people and four software programs about two weeks to create a two second blurp of my favorite purr instrument. It started with drumming on a toy football, of all things, and I included some wind sounds and it has some air movement. It was a pretty complicated process.