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Yet Another Cat Playing the Piano

They were awakened by the banging of the piano. The piano, a sober baby grand, stood in the corner of the living room. It was a sort of monument to a history of unfulfilled hopes and ambitions, and it did give the room a certain tone. The room was in a large apartment in the older part of a big city. Usually its keys were covered, but sometimes someone left it open. For the most part, no one played it, so the sound was surprising, even shocking, heard suddenly in the middle of the night.

“What is that?” the man growled.

“The piano,” answered his wife. “The cat is running back and forth on the keyboard.” Neither of them were really friends with the cat. It had been inherited from the former occupants of the apartment. The couple had agreed to find it a home, but every time they started thinking about this project the cat disappeared and nothing was done. Not that they had anything against the cat, moving it along was just not high on their list of things to do. Anyway, they didn't know anything about finding a cat a home, and they supposed it would keep the apartment free of rodents, so it might as well stay. They made some moderate efforts to give it food, and to provide it with a cat box, but the cat had some secret way in and out of the apartment, and mostly seemed above and beyond their attempted ministrations.

The playing the piano was a new thing the couple had not heard before.

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” croaked the man. “Shut up, cat,” he called. But the cat paid no attention. Only when the man got up and went grumbling to the piano did the cat desist. And as usual, disappeared.

Since the cat played the piano only occasionally, and not for very long, they decided to tolerate its little concerts and otherwise pretty much forgot about it. Sometimes, then: “Bang bang bang boom!” “Urgh!” “It's just the cat.” Back to sleep. This went on for two or three years.

Occasionally the couple had parties, a sort of second- or third-tier social life, and once they had a guest who was well-known in their circle for playing the piano cleverly, if not quite at a professional level. The wife decided to get a small cassette recorder, and put it near the piano, so that if their guest was inspired they could record it. The guest did start to play, and the recorder was turned on, and then everyone forgot about it. The performer soon ran out of material and everyone was now interested in getting drunk and arguing about politics anyway, and so the recorder ran unheeded until it ran out of tape and it turned itself off. As it happened the cat had come out and done a turn on the piano, but no one paid much attention — by then the guests were all yelling anyway — and so not only the pianist but the cat were recorded. The next day, the wife, who had not thought much of the party or the piano performance and was probably unaware of the cat's contribution, shoved the recorder into a closet, and that was that for the moment. In fact, for a few years.

Eventually, the cat's playing sessions declined, and were not missed.

A few years later, the couple had a well-known scholar of contemporary music over for a gathering, and in looking for something else, the man clumsily caused the now dusty casette recorder to fall out of the closet. It fell in such a way that it started playing, first the party, then the cat. After a few moments' confusion, the couple remembered how the tape had come to be made, rewound it, and turned it on, mostly to amuse their guest. As it turned out, he hadn't been very interested in what was, after all, a pretty standard talented-amateur performance, until the cat's part started to run. Suddenly the professor fell silent and began paying very close attention.

“Who is the second performer?” he asked after a while.

“Oh, this cat we used to have around. Sometimes at night she would come out and ”play“ the piano by running up and down on the keys. By accident someone turned the tape-recorder on, I guess. We forgot all about it.”

“Why, that's quite extraordinary,” said the professor. “It's amazing.”

“Who? Our friend Arnold? He'll certainly be surprised.”

“No, I mean the other performer. What you say is a cat. It's quite interesting. Uh — cats — he emphasized the word to express doubt — “don't usually have a sense of rhythm in a musical sense, to say nothing of the harmonic structures present. This is really very renarkable.”

“I'm afraid it sounds like a lot of noise to me,” said the wife, who frequently liked to assume the role of matter-of-fact ordinary person unimpressed by high-falutin or esoteric flights of fancy, accompanied by a satirical country accent.

“Yes,” said the professor, “I'm afraid it is rather avant, certainly an acquired taste. Still, if you listend to a lot of the material being composed these days, you might think quite differently about it. Sun Lung Mock's prepared density chord masses for example — well, there's definitely a resemblance.”

The wife now felt her usual stance was the wrong move, and stepped back, but her husband was more aggressive.

“Noise or music — professor, is this material really music? Should we take the tape to somebody? Is it worth anything?”

“Most certainly,” said the professor. “It might be quite valuable. It should be analyzed carefully. I take it you are sure no one besides your guest — and, uh, your cat, of course — played the piano? Extraordinary, extraordinary. Take good care of of the recording.”

“No one at the party besides Arnold played the piano. Or if they did, were mighty sneaky about it,” said the man.

“And this cat,” the professor asked, “she is — where?”

“Oh, she left us awhile ago,” said the man. “We haven't seen her in months. We let her out, to visit with her friends, as cats do. Sometimes she stayed away for days, weeks, months. She had other interests besides being a house cat, I guess. She may be living her life elsewhere — anywhere. It was quite a while ago. She wasn't really a pet, more a fellow resident, I would say.” Them man thought he was being witty, but he was actually rather embarrassed about not having a better idea of the cat's habits or whereabouts.

“I see”, said the professor. “So it seems this tape is all that remains.”

“Yes, just the one tape.”

“Can you make me a copy?”

“Of course.”

Later, you might have seen the couple pacing the streets for weeks, even months, thereafter, looking for the cat, even calling the cat (although they had not bothered to give the cat a name, so that part wasn't easy), but she did not appear. A great fuss (among the people who make great fusses about such things) was made about the tape, and numerous controversies, but no one could prove much about it one way or the other. Precise analysis of the tape showed that the background sounds, once the party noises were removed electronically, were consistent with the keys being struck thoughtfully by a medium-sized cat; but without a witness willing to testify, no final conclusion could be drawn.

Sometimes, it is said, people have heard a certain familiar yowling from above, but whether in greeting, inquiry, demand, or mockery, it has been impossible to tell, and is thought in any case to be inadmissible as evidence.

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Notes: (Music by cats or their disciples))
The Cat's Fugue (Scarlatti)
Kitten on the Keys (Zez Confrey (1921))
The Labyrinth of the Cathedral Scored for the Purrs of Eleven Different Cats (Terry Fox, (1989(?)))