When Janet Marlow talks about sound, she is not talking about background music. She’s talking about animal health care, particularly feline.

Pet Acoustics develops species-specific sound environments designed to reduce stress and support behavioural and health outcomes in animals. Cats are a major focus.

Speaking with Feline Business Brief last month, Marlow pointed out a core insight that remains poorly understood in the pet industry: cats hear much, much more than humans.

Far more, in fact, than most environments are designed to accommodate.

“[Our original graph] says 64,000 hertz for cats … but we now know it’s up to 84,000 hertz,” she said, referring to the chart below.

That compares to 20,000 hertz for humans, and 45,000 hertz for dogs.

This sensory mismatch, she said, has direct consequences for stress, behaviour, and health.

“We now know that stress causes illness in humans and in animals,” she said, pointing to the cumulative impact of chronic stress rather than single events.

The origin story of Pet Acoustics is deeply personal to Marlow, a former classical and jazz recording artist. She traces her work back to her own cat, Osborne.

In the 1990s, Osborne went missing for two days.

“[Osborne] was 15. He was insisted on going out. It was raining. He insisted I let him out, and he was gone for two days … We called and called and called and called, and he crawled out of the woods to come to us. I rushed him to the bed, and I went to sing to him every day for five days,” Marlow said.

Heartbreakingly, Osborne passed away.

“When he passed, I continued on with my life, but the burning questions [remained] about why the music was so profound for him and all the other pets,” she said.

Drawing on her musical background, Marlow began researching animal hearing and experimenting with species-specific sound. The result was a proprietary approach to sound design based on frequency, decibel range, and harmonic structure.

“Dogs and cats prefer long, sustained tones and phrases… they’re looking for no activity sonically that’s going to bring them into hyper vigilance,” Marlow said. Percussion and vocals are deliberately excluded, while sustained instruments are favoured.

While Pet Acoustics began as a home-use product, its most commercially significant applications are now in veterinary care, particularly around the feline care gap.

Her focus is on stress “trigger stacking”, which is the compounding effect of carriers, car travel, waiting rooms, and exam spaces.

“Animals depend on predictability… we want to create one consistent environment that the cat knows is safe and calm,” she said.

By using the same sound environment at home, in transit, and in-clinic, Pet Acoustics aims to reduce cortisol spikes and improve feline compliance.

For clinics, the implications are practical. Less-stressed cats are easier to handle, easier to examine, and more likely to return.

Beyond sound therapy, Pet Acoustics has expanded into hearing health. “I developed the world’s first digital hearing tests that can be downloaded from the app and used,” Marlow said.

More than 50,000 pet owners have completed the test globally, generating behavioural hearing data that can be shared with veterinarians.

Looking ahead, Marlow plans to focus on partnerships to increase feline vet visits and new clinic-focused speaker and light therapy systems.

“I am completely focused on cats this 2026,” she said.

Cats remain significantly underrepresented in veterinary care. Across major markets, they visit clinics far less frequently than dogs.

The reasons are well documented: transport stress, handling aversion, clinic environments optimised for dogs, and negative past experiences that compound over time.

What is less often discussed is the failure to accommodate cats’ heightened hearing:

From a commercial perspective, this matters because stress directly impacts demand for veterinary care. This means:

While most calming solutions for cats rely on pheromones or supplements, a small but growing group of companies such as Pet Acoustics is using sound to help reduce stress:

For veterinary clinics and feline-focused brands, the expanding sound and sensory space offers opportunities to adapt environments to supports feline stress reduction and improve visit compliance.

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