Th Cat Piano

[angelophile]

The cat piano was the work of a German scholar over 350 years ago. Athanasius Kircher designed the cat piano and documented it in the Musurgia Universalis in 1650. The piano was designed to raise the spirits of an Italian prince who suffered from stress. The musician would select cats whose voices were at different pitches then arrange them in the pens accordingly. The piano delivered sharp pokes into the tails of the cats.

The cat piano confirms Darnton's discovery that most early modern Europeans found the torture of cats funny. It also illustrates Kircher's fascination with the relationship between the art of music and the natural production of animal sounds. But for us it is an instrument that has mercifully been forgotten.

Although... I wonder if there are any blueprints.