Just saw this in the Globe & Mail online:

"What kinds of music should I buy for my cat? A team of Austrian animal psychologists has observed that cats, which have rapid pulses, appreciate music with a fast beat and prefer deep rather than high-pitched tones. They seem to love male-voiced choirs, the double bass and the oboe, but detest violins, writes Clare Chapman in The Sunday Times of London. For five days at a time, the test cats were filmed. If they liked what they heard, they moved closer to the speakers; if they didn't, they would stand still or move away."

I'm not much of a cat-person m'self, but it strikes me that cats may have cause (call it a 'gut' feeling) to take against certain instruments ...

sian