In a world brimming with peculiar inventions, few are as unsettling as the “Cat Organ.” This instrument, first dreamed up in the 17th century, was described as a keyboard fitted with sharpened nails that plucked the tails of live cats to produce music. Well, it would be more a cacophony of yowls and meows.
While there is no evidence that this instrument was ever built, its grotesque concept raises questions about the boundaries of art, cruelty, and therapy.
A Horrific Melody: Origins of the Cat Organ
The earliest mentions of the Cat Organ come from the writings of Athanasius Kircher. This Jesuit scholar chronicled its use in his 1650 book, Musurgia Universalis. According to Kircher, the Cat Organ was devised to lift the spirits of a melancholy prince. So, cats of various ages and sexes would be selected based on the pitch of their meows.
Their tails would be stretched beneath the keys of a keyboard, where hammers with sharp points would strike them when played. Of course, the result would be a discordant symphony of feline wails, intended to amuse and distract.
Kircher’s account was not unique. Later, similar stories appeared from other sources, such as French composer Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin in his work, Musiciana. Weckerlin detailed a procession witnessed by King Felipe II of Spain (the most powerful ruler of his time) in 1549. Supposedly, a chariot carrying an organ-playing bear was accompanied by an instrument that used cats instead of pipes. As a key was pressed, a cat’s tail was pulled, producing a “lamentable meow” in place of a musical note that would “make even the mice break out in dance.”
The idea of the Cat Organ was not merely a macabre jest. It was also a proposed treatment for mental illness. Johann Christian Reil, was the German physician who coined the term “psychiatry.” He suggested that the shocking sounds of the Cat Organ could jolt patients back into focus. His belief was rooted in the theory that extreme stimuli could awaken the senses, much like the “Dead Cat Strategy” in politics, where a shocking distraction diverts attention from more serious issues. Reil never used such a contraption and presented his idea as a hypothetical fix.
“A fugue played on this instrument — when the ill person is so placed that he cannot miss the expressions on their faces and the play of these animals — must bring Lot’s wife herself from her fixed state into conscious awareness,” Reil wrote in Rhapsodieen über die Anwendung der psychischen Curmethode auf Geisteszerrüttungen (1803).
Music, Therapy, or Torture?
The Cat Organ represents a strange intersection of art, medicine, and animal cruelty. While the whole thing sounds appalling, this strange instrument (if you could call it that) offers an intriguing glimpse into past attitudes toward animals and mental health. Dog fights, cockfights, and bearbaiting were all common practice across Europe at the tail end of the Middle Ages and beyond. Given this context, abusing housecats in such a manner was probably seen as not particularly cruel by most people of the time.
Strangely enough, using animals as musical instruments was not confined to the Cat Organ. Historical texts also describe the “Piganino,” an instrument originating in 15th-century France where pigs squealed to produce sound.
These devices, whether real or imagined (there is no tangible evidence they were ever built), reflect a fascination with the grotesque and the experimental, revealing a period when the lines between art, science, and cruelty were often blurred.
Some historians argue that the Cat Organ was purely a product of dark humor or fantastical imagination. However, in 2010, the idea was revisited in its wholesome form when musician Henry Dagg performed using a “Cat Organ” made of squeaking toys, drawing scores of laughter from his dazzled audience. Unlike its historical counterpart, no real animals were harmed in its use.
