The cat with an ear for the great composers

SIR – Ivan Hewett (Arts, May 30) considers whether animals can enjoy music.

Many years ago, I could always determine if my ginger tom was in the house snoozing somewhere by taking out my classical guitar and launching into a piece of repertoire. He had a particular penchant for preludes – some slow (Heitor

Villa-Lobos) and some a little more pacy (JS Bach).

He would silently slope in, seating himself close in front of me and gazing intently, before visibly relaxing – an uncritical audience, until eventually he retired back upstairs.

Roy S Nicholson

Wakefield, West Yorkshire

By the 19th-century British painter John Alfred Vinter Mewsical: Beethoven’s Andante