Pspspsps. Just typing that nearly alerted every cat in the neighbourhood to my exact location. It’s the most powerful summoner of feline friends known to man, and to this day, it has never failed me. So, why does saying pspspsps work on cats the same way painting a pentagram on your basement floor works on demons? These cat experts have some ideas.
Of course, we must preface this with a disclaimer: as cat expert Mikel Delgado tells Inverse, there isn’t a wealth of academic papers on the powerful pspspsps.
“There’s been no research on the pspspsps sound response in cats, and we can’t ask cats directly why most seem to respond to it,” he cautions.
However, he has two main theories behind their bizarre connection to it: the noise’s frequency is naturally appealing to cats, and that it mimics “naturally relevant” sounds like mice chattering.
Veterinarian Chyrle Bonk also thinks this may be the case. She reckons the pspspsps sound piques the curiosity of cats because it sounds familiar, either through its resemblance to purring or prey sounds.
It turns out cats just also bloody love high frequency noises.
“Cats can hear sound frequencies three times higher than we can — presumably so they can find prey more easily,” certified feline training specialist Molly DeVoss told Inverse.
Veterinary behaviourist Katherine Pankratz also chimed in and said the pspspsps sound could elicit such intense reactions because of evolutionary biology — in terms of predators hunting mice, but cats are also prey to some other creatures too.
“This higher frequency sound paired with a consonant that interrupts that sounds create a staccato sound that is abrupt and attention-grabbing,” she said.
“They will have a better chance of survival to alert to sudden abrupt noises to assess whether or not it is a threat instead of ignoring a noise.”
Well there ya have it folks. We may not have fully solved the mysteries that are our wonderful moggies, but we’re getting closer by the day.
Now, who do I have to meow to for an actual pspspsps research study to be organised?
