Yasashi MacFeline

The effect music has on some animals is funny.
My male cat, Yasashi, loves the bagpipes.
Really.
I discovered quite by accident that his favorite CD is "Amazing Grace: A Real Highland Fling." I played it on my stereo one day some months ago (because I, too, like the bagpipes) and he became a cat transformed.
He paced back and forth, meowing all the while in the most plaintive way -- and on key, too. It was as if he were recalling a cherished Celtic memory from the distant past.

His favorite songs are slow, mournful dirges in which every note from a solo bagpipe is achingly drawn out, like juice being squeezed from an orange.
He also responds to jigs, but less vociferously. If more than one piper is playing, or if the pipes are accompanied by drums, he loses interest.
Every time I play this CD, it's as if he is hearing it for the first time.
My two other cats, both females, are unmoved because they are tone-deaf and preoccupied with more mundane things. They can't be bothered with something as frivolous as music.

Of course, Yasashi is probably responding to what he thinks is a phantom cat somewhere in the apartment just out of sight, a fellow feline in unearthly distress.
But I like to think it's because he has a wee bit of "Braveheart" in him.

I have a cat
unlike all other types
he's in love with the sound
of the Scottish bagpipes

When the skirling begins
his ears perk up straight
"That's not music," he thinks
"That's a possible mate"