Have you picked up your pet’s FoCoMX wristband?

Apr 20

This weekend, downtown Fort Collins transforms into one massive stage for FoCoMX 2025—aka the Fort Collins Music eXperiment. With over 400 Colorado bands playing at 35+ venues around Old Town, this beloved music festival celebrates the incredible local talent that makes our community hum. Whether you're into punk, jazz, bluegrass, indie, hip hop, metal, or folk, FoCoMX has a sound for every ear.

Well... every human ear, that is.

Here at inkwell, Fort Collins' new, independent veterinary emergency clinic, we’re working all weekend while the city rocks out. But as we pretend that our Sonos system is pumping in music straight from Old Town, we have to wonder: Do our patients—cats and dogs—have music preferences too?

Because we can’t let idle curiosities (or sleeping dogs) lie, we couldn’t resist digging into the literature to investigate this seemingly absurd notion. Turns out—it’s not absurd at all.

Dogs: Classical Vibes, Please

If you asked me what music preferences a dog might have, I would say it depends on the breed. For example, young Golden Retrievers surely spend their days alternating between The Jonas Brothers and The Archies’ “Sugar Sugar.” Whereas, I could only assume Whippets have “Cotton Eyed Joe” blasting on repeat.

Turns out, studies have shown that dogs tend to mellow out when listening to classical music. They bark less, sleep more, and wag their tails more to songs with calm tempos and gentle tones (Amaya, 2021). On the other hand, dogs showed increases in barking, body shaking, and stress behaviors when listening to heavy metal.

Preferred genres for dogs:

Classical
Soft rock
Reggae (yes, seriously)

Cats: Bespoke or Bust

If my experience with my own cats is any indication, our feline overlords are insulted that we would even try to relegate them to a single genre of music. Their musical taste, much like my cat’s shape when he’s laying on the floor, is likely indefinable.

Let’s face it: if any of your pets is going to exasperatedly explain why their obscure French R&B collection simply sounds better on vinyl, it’s your cat.

When it comes to human music - much like when they hear you call their name - they are largely indifferent. But when played music written specifically for feline ears—incorporating purring tempos, high-pitched tones, and sliding frequencies—cats respond positively. They approach show fewer stress signals and are easier to handle in veterinary settings (Hampton et al., 2020).

Two cat-approved jams:

Scooter Bere’s Aria (David Teie)
Rusty’s Ballad

You can find them on MusicForCats.com and your favorite streaming service.

Soundtrack Your Pet’s Weekend

While the city may be taking down the stage lights and loading up hundreds of musical instruments into the backs of vans, now’s the time for an experiment of your own. Look back through the list of artists and see what your pet thinks. Grab some mellow tunes for your pup and some experimental ones for your cat. Between triages we will be doing the same.

If you visit the clinic and Italo-disco/spacesynth is pumping through our system, you’ll know why. It’s all for science.

References

Amaya, V., et al. (2021). Effects of Music Pitch and Tempo on the Behaviour of Kennelled Dogs. Animals, 11(1), 10. [DOI:10.3390/ani11010010]
Hampton, A., et al. (2020). Effects of music on behavior and physiological stress response of domestic cats in a veterinary clinic. J Feline Med Surg, 22(2), 122-128. [DOI:10.1177/1098612X19828131]
Snowdon, C.T., Teie, D., Savage, M. (2015). Cats Prefer Species-Appropriate Music. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 166, 106–111.