As anyone with a pet probably knows, some will sort of vibrate when they get up from a nap and stretch. I do it myself and it feels pretty good.
One of the cats seems to do it at just the right frequency for me to hear. I had always dismissed the idea figuring that what I was really sensing was the physical vibration - much like how you tend to feel low frequencies rather than hear them. But this time, he’s on the other side of the room and is obscured by the monitor, so I’m pretty sure I didn’t feel anything. Therefore I’m assuming that I actually heard it.
The thing is, a) what are the odds that a middle-aged man can hear such low frequencies and b) what are the odds that the cat is shaking faster than 20 cycles per second. I mean, yes, he’s a cat and as such is pretty fast (when he wants to be). But >20hz? Really?
If you think I’m hallucinating, that’s cool. You may very well be correct. I’ll probably disagree, but the point would be well taken.
I can too, sometimes. A lot depends on what they are standing on. If is the cushy couch pillows I don’t hear anything, if it’s a hard surface, especially a table, I sometimes can.
I hear it a lot, with three to five cats in my small space (thank goodness two of them went home with their owners a while back. Now if my daughter would take HER two…).
It’s definitely not purring, but that was a reasonable guess. The purring mechanism on both cats is impaired. Both the male and female purr but it is barely audible. If the male is really happy and purring so loudly that he periodically gags a little, it’s easier to hear but still not loud. Also the sound only lasts as long as they are stretching which is at most 1-2 seconds.
I can hear my own stretch-vibration when I do an over-the-head arm stretch. One of my cats, Chico, will do this whole-body stretch from toes-to-toes when I pick him up sometimes, and I hear exactly the same sound. It’s damn adorable when he does it!
I don’t think it necessarily has anything to do with the speed of the vibration, but rather something percussive. I don’t know if it’s in the cat, or in something else in the room. The latter definitely fits saje’s description.
Think about it: when you shake, say, a maraca, you aren’t shaking it anywhere near 20 hertz, and yet it produces a lot of noise from the percussion of the internal material against the outside material.
My conure parrot vibrated at an audible frequency. He did it when he was happy, you could see the tips of his chest feathers were moving and hear them produce a very deep “WHUUUMMM…” noise.