Cats & Dulcimers

Actually - pets and dulcimers. How do your pets respond when you play? I've had my cats rub on the hammered dulcimer stand and hang out in my mountain dulcimer case. Naps are pretty important to our cats so really if one is snoozing they do tend to look a little annoyed when I play/practice but soon enough drift off into dreamland right away. I will put out a caution to play your instrument outside. We have plenty of gulls around near Lake Superior. I've played at a public park and had a gull land on my hammered dulcimer and then fly toward my mountain dulcimer pick thinking it was a food item.
Here's another approach to looking at animals - let's think about playing music WITH them or with parts of them. Hold on before you picture up too many images. My first comment is to go ahead and play the mountain dulcimer with a turkey feather. It looks cool and has a nice sound effect. As for our pets I have played with the nail of a cat to pick a mountain dulcimer. Our cats shed the nail sheath and here and there we find them so I tried it one day. It amplified the sound more than picking with the finger pad. Our cats have a bell on their collars. Have you ever tried putting a cat collar around your wrist as you strum? You can even use the real jingle bells found around the holiday. Wearing them on your wrist or wrapped around your ankles as you tap your foot gives a fun sound to accompany you as you play. Could cat hair we turned into playing? Sure, go ahead and felt the fur into your own felted pick. You can do it as a mass or to surround a different object. Felting can be done by wet felting - rubbing together when wet and partly soapy - or there are thin needles for needlefelting. I'm always exploring ideas (and need to turn more into some action) of where needlefelted cat fur can become a part of. Plenty of possibilities. That's a wrap for the pet /animal connection.