Muzak For The Cat's Meow

They say music can help a plant grow or calm a kicking baby or even soothe the savage beast. But did you ever wonder what tickles the musical fancy of your favorite feline? CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen found out.

To the lover of cats, a happy meow is music to the ears. But what is music to the ears of a cat?

To find out, Japanese researcher Norio Aoki wired cats to a machine that measures the heartbeat and played a variety of music.

Rock music, for instance: the chart showed that even nine lives isn't enough time to fall in love with that. The numbers look like Wall Street on a bad day. "That disturbs the cat a lot," the researcher says.

Okay, how about gentle music? Ah, that's a feline flat line. Cats like music that's more like Muzak. Or as Aoki puts it, a steady melody.

That's news you can use if you're into marketing music for cable television like, say, a pet channel. Yes, it's come to that. What they like, says one music programmer, is classical, instrumental and new age music.

So, cat lovers, put on more Mozart and less Madonna, more Beethoven and less Beatles. Or, as your furry friend might say, the right music is the cat's meow.

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