Cat Anecdotes

Any cat owner will have cat anecdotes, funny or not, about the felines in their lives. There's enough bad-news stories about cats and the lousy way they're treated by some people (that all-too-frequently appear on the Cat News page) that this page is deliberately more light-hearted in nature. Here you'll find a number of (mostly) funny and humerous stories and anecdotes involving our furry friends. I'll be adding new items to this page frequently (the most recent will be at the top), but if you have a story to tell about your own furball or a cat with which you're acquainted, please send it in. If there's one thing I know, visitors love reading about other people's cats!

Acoustic Kitty

In 1966, the CIA hatched a plan to discover Russia's Cold War secrets by installing bugging devices in a cat. "Acoustic Kitty," they hoped, would allow them to eavesdrop on secret conversations from window sills and park benches.

"They slit the cat open, put batteries in him, wired him up," recalled former spy Victor Marchetti. "The tail was used as an antenna. They made a monstrosity. They tested him and tested him. They found he would walk off the job when he got hungry, so they put another wire in to override that."

Moreover, when Acoustic Kitty, a tabby with an eye for the ladies, wandered off in search of the opposite sex, more wires were implanted to detect and bypass his lusty urges.

After exhaustive testing, the cat, finally ready for his first assignment, was set loose in the street, followed by a CIA support truck loaded with expensive monitoring equipment, and was promptly run over by a taxi cab.

Alberto Ascari & the Black Cat

Italian auto racer Alberto Ascari was famously superstitious. He was terrified of the number 13, and would avoid bad omens at any expense. Indeed, on one occasion, after encountering a black cat in the road, Ascari turned his car around and took another route.

[Oddly, Ascari died (while testing a Ferrari sports car at Monza) at the same age (36) that his famous father Antonio had died (while leading the French Grand Prix in 1925). Both men died on the 26th of the month.]

Cats "Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this." Containing quotes, jokes and stories, this book celebrates the world's favourite furry friend.

P. T. Barnum And The Cherry-Colored Cat

Accounts of the cherry-colored cat in jokelore indicate that the trick was practiced during the eighteenth century. A century later P. T. Barnum, a past master of trickery, is said to have been a victim of it. A man from Vermont wrote offering him a cherry-colored cat for $100. Always on the lookout for rare attractions for his show, he replied that he would send the money on condition that the creature was guaranteed to be genuinely, not artificially, cherry-colored. Upon receipt of the guarantee, Barnum sent the money, and shortly afterward received a small crate. "When Barnum had it opened, a black cat jumped out. Around its neck was a ribbon from which hung a note: 'Up in Vermont,' it read, 'the cherries are black!'

Lizz Winstead: Catholic Mother

"I'm Catholic, and my mother and I were unpacking and she found my diaphragm," Lizz Winstead once recalled. "I had to tell her it was a bathing cap for my cat."

George Clooney: Kitty Pity

George Clooney once played an unusual practical joke on close friend and fellow actor Richard Kind (famed for such roles as Paul on "Spin City" and Max Bialystock in "The Producers"): "Richard had this cat that he loved and adored," Ben Weiss, a "Friends" assistant director and another member of Clooney's circle later recalled.

"So George would go in the bathroom, and that's where the litter box was. And there would be cat s--- in there, so George would clean it up and flush it down the toilet. Then Richard would go in there and say, 'God, it's so weird. My cat hasn't taken a s--- in forever... Richard, understandably concerned, went to the vet to get some kind of thing to make the cat go to the bathroom... The poor cat. The cat's s---ting, and George is still cleaning it up."

So how did the madness end? "Finally, George stood over the cat box and took a giant s---," Weiss explained. "And finally Richard goes in there and says, 'Oh, my God! Kitty!'"