Athanasius Kircher first described the cat piano in his landmark 1650 work Musurgia Universalis.
In order to raise the spirits of an Italian prince burdened by the cares of his position, a musician created for him a cat piano. The musician selected cats whose natural voices were at different pitches and arranged them in cages side by side, so that when a key on the piano was depressed, a mechanism drove a sharp spike into the appropriate cat’s tail. The result was a melody of meows that became more vigorous as the cats became more desperate. Who could not help but laugh at such music? Thus was the prince raised from his melancholy.
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Bill, it is so strange that you brought Kircher up. I recently saw an exhibit of his here. Probably the strangest, most inexplicable place I've ever been, but I highly recommend it to anybody. And here is the link to the exhibit because the website is pretty basic and sometimes hard to navigate, probably going along with their whole setup. And all the pictures don't work, but you can still read about the pieces. The exhibit itself along with the museum was sort of a blur. I think I may have to head back there at some point to take it all in. It was almost too much.
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