Feline Freestyle Take One

Recently, I dusted off my "inner freestyle" with Harvey and Dewey.  I have done canine musical freestyle with my border collie, Liam and my late mutt, Harley.  I found that it is something that is fun and I can easily do at home with enough space.  I decided to try it out with the cats.  Both Harvey and Dewey seem to be sensitive to noise.  I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way.  I mean that they are responsive to noises and music even on a subtle level.

As a kitten, Harvey would come to me when I sang amazing grace.  Some nights I would sing it to him while laying in bed.  He would come to me and promptly lay on my neck.  I'm not sure if he liked the noise and vibration of my throat or if he was trying to choke me so I would stop singing.  Either way, it showed that he had some sort of feeling/thought about the sound.  They also run to my cell phone when it rings.  They especially like the classical music ring tone.  This behavior comes in handy when I've misplaced my phone and someone is calling me.  I just need to follow the cats!

The biggest thing that made me start thinking about how the cats responded to music happened when I was judging a freestyle video competition.  As I sat at a computer desk watching the videos, Harvey would come up to be with me.  Some songs, he would fall asleep during.  Other songs he would get up and leave.  He wouldn't come back until they were over.  Then, for a few of the routines, he actually sat and watched.  This surprised me because it showed that he liked or disliked different songs.  After that, I started thinking about how animals other than dogs respond to music.

Harvey during freestyle judging

All these events lead up to my decision to train them in freestyle.  I will be taking an online class on heeling to music with them in a few weeks.  I liked the idea of the class because it provides structure.  Because we need to train heeling for the class, I have wanted to work with them more in that area.  I was going to do that tonight but after talking with a friend, I decided to play around with what music they liked.  I picked a handful of pieces and made a short video of us moving to each song.  The result was... interesting.

Dewey was up first.  He tends to think more during training.  I honestly think he had no idea what was going on.  He would follow me and then stop and look around as if to say "Huh?  I don't get it.".  The one video that we took had an interesting part to it though.  He jumped at my hand three times and it kind of matches the music.  I don't know whether it was a coincidence or not but it is interesting none the less.  Here is that video:

Harvey was next.  He was astonishing.  I will let the video speak for itself.

It was so much fun!  I really had a good time with him.  I'm interested to see where we go from here!