An Aberystwyth animal owner says his rescue cat Daisy doesn’t react to her name, however she does react to his singing
Tony Jones has actually even recorded a video to show his point in which he’s heard calling Daisy’s name from the next room in his home.
He then begins singing Etta James’s I’d rather go blind, which appears to make Daisy come and see him in the next room, leap up on the table and nuzzle into him.
Tony said: “I’m an amateur songwriter and sometimes sing along to karaoke on the tablet from YouTube. For some reason Daisy finds this very exciting. She is a fun, talkative cat.”
Tony just recently checked out a post pricing estimate Cats Protection behaviour specialist Daniel Warren-Cummings about whether cats might be trained like dogs.
Tony said: “I found it so fascinating I was moved to prove, scientifically, that our cat loves my singing.”
Daisy as a kitten with Marian Jebb (Cats Protection )
Tony and his better half Marian Jebb embraced nine-year-old Daisy through Cats Protection in Aberystwyth in 2014.
After formerly residing in a caravan as a kitten, Daisy is now surrounded by fields.
Tony included: “She loves her field and patrols it when the weather is good enough. She likes to play with her humans for 20 minutes first thing in the morning, and an hour last thing at night. Plus a bit of Chase Game.”
Cats Protection’s Central Behaviour Officer Daniel Warren-Cummings said: “Cats have remarkable hearing and Daisy could definitely be responding to her owner’s dulcet tones.
“Some think certain sounds within human singing may be a sound cats are ‘hard-wired’ to respond to. However, it’s just as likely that the cat is wanting to investigate an unusual or different stimulus in the house.
“Initially the cat could have been responding out of curiosity but may start to link the singing with something positive like fuss and attention.
“The cat may respond to the singing and not to their name being called because there is a much clearer link that has been positively reinforced. Every time the owner sings, the cat comes to investigate and gets a fuss.
“However, owners use their cat’s names often without much or any reinforcement. It becomes white noise to the cat. If an owner started by only saying the cat’s name then throwing the cat a treat, very quickly the cat would start to build a clear association with the name. Remember, cats don’t know they have names, it’s just another sound to them, unless it is ‘taught’ to them and well reinforced.”
