How to Record Cat Purring on Your Phone, Gently

The best way to record cat purring is to wait for a purr that is already happening, then start your phone's voice recorder and rest the phone close to you, on the cushion or chair arm, without pushing it at the cat. Quiet the room first, let it run for two or three minutes and trim it later. Never wake, move or hold your cat still to get the sound.

That last line is the one rule we keep in every recording idea on this site. A purr you had to arrange is a different sound from the one you actually live with, and it costs the cat something to make it.

Why is a cat's purr so hard to record?

A purr is lower than it feels. In a 2023 study in Current Biology, Christian Herbst and colleagues at the University of Vienna described purring at about 20 to 30 Hz, which the university's release calls far below even the lowest bass notes a human voice makes. You feel much of it as much as you hear it.

In practice that means:

• The phone needs to be fairly near. Low, soft sound fades quickly with distance, so a phone across the room often catches only the room.
• Household hum competes with it. Fridges, fans, heaters and traffic are low, steady sounds too. A quiet room helps more than any setting.
• Small speakers hide it. A purr played back on the phone's own speaker can sound thin or vanish. Check every recording on headphones before you decide it failed.

Researchers have the same trouble. When Karen McComb's team at the University of Sussex studied purring, National Geographic reported that they trained owners to make the recordings at home, because cats tend to purr in private and leave when strangers arrive. The people a cat lives with are best placed to catch it.

What is the best way to record cat purring?

Here is the routine we suggest, start to finish:

1. Get the phone ready before the purr. Open your voice recorder app and leave it on the first screen. On iPhone that is Voice Memos; most Android phones have a recorder app too.
2. Silence the phone. Turn on Do Not Disturb so a message does not ping halfway through. On iPhone, Apple notes that turning on Silent mode also mutes the start and stop tones in Voice Memos, which leaves one less sound in the room.
3. Quiet the room, if you can do it without getting up. TV off, music off, fan off. If switching something off means moving the cat, leave it and record anyway.
4. Wait for a purr that is already there. Usually that is a cat settled on your lap, beside you on the sofa or on the bed at night.
5. Rest the phone near you. Put it on the cushion beside your leg, on the chair arm, or on the blanket next to your hand. Microphone end towards the cat, screen down so the light does not change anything.
6. Do not push it closer. If your cat sniffs it, shifts away or stops, the phone is too near. Let it be farther away; a quieter recording of a relaxed cat is the goal.
7. Keep still and let it run two or three minutes. Purrs come and go. A longer file gives you a clean minute to keep.
8. Trim and name it. Cut the fumbling at the start and end. Apple's Voice Memos has trim built in. Rename the file with the date and place, for example "evening, blue chair".

If your cat is purring while you stroke it, you can keep one hand still on the cat and start the recorder with the other. The sound of your hand moving on fur will be in the file. Some people like that; it is what the moment sounded like.

Where should the phone go?

The safety line from our cat book's sound pages is simple: do not provoke sound or bring the device close to your cat. In practice that means the phone sits where you are, and the cat decides the distance.

Never put the phone on the cat, under its chin, or inside a bed or box it is using. Those places belong to the cat.

Phone settings that help a purr recording

You do not need an external microphone. A few settings on the phone you already have make a bigger difference:

• Voice Isolation or Wide Spectrum (iPhone). Apple's guide says Voice Isolation filters out background sounds and Wide Spectrum keeps them, on models that offer it. Voice Isolation is designed around speech, so record ten seconds each way and compare.
• Mono or stereo. In Settings, then Apps, then Voice Memos, you can choose the recording mode. Stereo uses more than one of the phone's microphones and can give a fuller sense of the room on headphones. Mono is fine for a single purr.
• Recording level. Apple's own advice is to move the microphone closer to or farther from what you are recording. With a cat, adjust by where you rest the phone before the purr starts, never by moving it towards the cat during it.
• Video as a backup. If your phone's camera is already in your hand, a short video records sound too. Point it at the room, not into your cat's face.

Once the file is made, copy it off the phone into a folder with your other cat photos and notes. Phones get replaced, and recordings tend to get lost with them.

Why do cats purr when petted, and is every purr a happy one?

International Cat Care describes purring as a murmuring sound made with the mouth closed, used in many contexts, often as a greeting and during friendly contact. Purring, chirruping and trilling are among the signs it lists that a cat wants to interact.

A purr is not always contentment, though. Elle Boden, a Behaviour Officer at Cats Protection, told Countryfile that cats can purr when stressed or in pain too, so the sound alone does not tell you how a cat feels. Look at the rest of the cat: soft eyes and a loose body, or flattened ears and a tense crouch. If your cat starts purring far more than usual while hiding, or a regular purrer goes quiet, put the phone away and ask your vet.

For the gentlest moments to catch a relaxed purr, our guide to the best spot to pet a cat covers where most cats like contact and how to tell when one has had enough.

Two purrs worth labelling: the lap purr and the breakfast purr

McComb's 2009 study recorded cats purring in two situations: while asking for food, and while resting or being stroked. Listeners rated the food-asking purrs as more urgent and less pleasant, even people who had never lived with a cat. The difference was a higher, cry-like sound the researchers found mixed into the purr, around 380 Hz according to National Geographic's report. When they removed it, listeners could no longer tell the two kinds apart.

So if your cat purrs at you by the kitchen counter every morning, that may be a different recording from the one on your lap at night. Both are worth keeping, and both are part of your cat's daily routine. Label them by the moment they came from. Do not hold breakfast back to get one; record the purr that turns up while you are making it anyway.

Many people search "why does my cat follow me around purring". If yours does, our page on why your cat follows you looks at what is going on, and the purr that comes with it is another good one to catch from where you stand.

What to do with a purr recording once you have it

A file sitting in a phone app is easy to lose. A few small habits keep it:

• Name it by the place and moment, so it does not end up as "New Recording 14".
• Write one line beside it. Where your cat was, what you were doing, what the house sounded like. Our cat daily routine page has a simple format for notes like this.
• Keep a few seconds of the room as well. A recording of the room your cat rests in, with nothing special happening, sounds dull today and very particular in a few years.
• Pair it with a photo of the place. The cat does not have to be in it. Our cat photoshoot ideas at home are built the same way: what is already there, no setup.

Our book The House Your Cat Knows has two pages built on this kind of recording. "The Sound of Arrival" asks you to record a few seconds of an arrival sound when it happens naturally, from a respectful distance. "The Soundtrack of the Room" asks for thirty seconds of a room your cat uses while nothing special is happening, with no added sounds, toys or tests to make it more interesting. A purr fits easily beside them.

If no purr comes today, leave the phone where it usually lives and try another evening. For more quiet ideas like this one, see our list of things to do with your cat.