Acoustic Kitty
In a plan that was hatched by someone who obviously never owned a cat, the CIA planned to make a cat into a bionic super spy. It was a bit like The Six-Million Dollar Man, except it was more like the 20-Million Dollar Cat. The plan was for the cat to be able to go to the Kremlin and Soviet embassies and be able to record conversations without arousing much suspicion.
The first phase of the plan was to figure out how to implant a listening device into the cat. In a one-hour procedure, a veterinarian put a microphone into the ear canal of the poor feline. Then at the base of the cat’s skull, they inserted a small radio transmitter and then ran a wire into its fur to connect the two components. The operation was a success and then came the hard part, training the cat.
The first issue that was experienced by the trainers was that the cat was easily distracted. Hunger would cause the cat to completely disobey any training or commands, and therefore it was decided that another operation was needed to address the cat’s ability to feel hunger. Even with the operation, it was found that the cat could only be counted to obey for short periods and only when there were limited distractions.
The first mission for the $20-million-dollar cat was to eavesdrop on two men who were on a park bench outside the Soviet compound. The mission failed, but there are disputes as to how and why. Some say that the cat was hit and killed by a car as it tried to cross the road to the park. Another source claims that the mission was abandoned due to the inability to train the cat, and that all the components were removed and the cat lived a long and healthy life afterward.