Kittens – Auxiliary Memory

by James Wallace Harris, 5/20/24

My cats usually freak out over sounds. If the yard guys come and start mowing outside, they run and hide. If they hear a tiny noise, they will run around until they find it. But if I play my loud rock music, they don’t even wake up.

I worry my music will hurt their ears. At times, I’ve thrown them out of the room and shut the door to protect them, but then they beg to get in. They are very insistent, scratching furiously at the door until I open it. They want to sleep on me while I listen to rock music at 85 decibels.

I just read this report, and it says 120 decibels will damage their ears, and long exposures at 95 decibels will cause harm. I’ve read that I can safely listen to loud music at 85 decibels for eight hours, and at 88 decibels for four hours, and 91 decibels for 2 hours. Well, I listen one to two hours a day, and try to keep it under 85 decibels, although it sometimes peaks at 90. (I have an app on my phone that measures loudness.)

I guess we’re okay. But why do the cats just completely ignore my music? It doesn’t even faze them. Even when I first turn it on, or when a new song plays. They never jump or startle at the stereo.

How do your cats react to music?

Maybe my cats are like me. Music puts me into a meditative state, even kinetic rock music. So, we all rock-out to the tunes for an hour with our eyes closed.

If you’re curious what kind of music we listen to, here’s my standard playlist.

That’s Ozzy above and Lily below.

By the way, Ozzy and Lily don’t seem to have any musical preferences.

JWH

by James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, April 10, 2019

At noon today, I snuck into the kitchen hoping to eat my egg salad sandwich before I had to feed the kittens. I’m doing an intermittent fast, so I haven’t eaten in 16 hours. I had already fed the kittens once this morning. I reached into the cabinet to get a saucer, but it made the tiniest of clanking noises, and the kittens thundered into the kitchen from the back bedroom, slamming their little bodies against the dishwasher to break their dash.

I had to feed them first. Damn. And Susan thinks we can get them off of Fancy Feast and onto a steady diet of crunchies. Ha!

I quickly put down their food and made my sandwich, but before I could take two bites Lily was climbing my leg. She’s gone crazy for people food lately.

I was gobbling down my sandwich as fast as I could. Lily won’t take no for an answer.

She’s a very determined tiny little kitten. But as she got to my waist, she saw a whole new world of the kitchen countertops. We’ve been worried when they were going to discover the counters. They’re already climbing higher and higher on everything.