Operation Acoustic Kitty was an attempt by the CIA in the 1960’s to use cats to spy for the United States of America. It went as badly as you’re thinking it would after you read the last sentence.
At the height of the Cold War in the 1960’s the US and the Soviet Union were constantly looking for a way to gain the upper hand in the intelligence game. The need for information meant both sides had to come up with inventive means to spy on the machinations of the enemy. What could be innocuous enough to avoid detection, small enough to be able to sneak around enemy positions, and possibly even be welcomed by the enemy as one of their own? The CIA thought they had found an answer: Cats. So Operation Acoustic Kitty was born
An unknown cat was picked to be the test subject for the operation. In a procedure that took about an hour, a veterinarian implanted a microphone in the cat’s ear canal, a small radio transmitter was placed at the base of the skull, and a thin wire was woven into its fur from its neck to its tail to serve as an antenna. This all to make sure the cat could unsuspectingly record and transmit the sounds of its surroundings. A few other surgeries were needed to address other issues stemming from the subject being a cat. Two big problems were how to deal with the cat’s attention span and sense of hunger, as it would constantly wander off in search of food. The procedure was successful, and it was decided to use the cat in a field test.
In 1967, the first Operation Acoustic Kitty mission was to eavesdrop on two Soviet diplomats in a park near the Soviet embassy in Washington D.C. The cat was released nearby, and it instantly tried to run away. Unfortunately it didn’t get very far. As it tried to dart across the busy streets of D.C, it was immediately hit by a taxi cab; killing the poor cat instantly. After the accident, a CIA cleanup team returned to the scene to retrieve the unfortunate kitty’s remains in order to keep the Soviets from commandeering the sensitive equipment. After this huge setback, and other failures due to the difficulty of training cats to behave as needed, the project was considered a complete failure and abandoned. The closing memorandum, declassified year later ,written by CIA researchers came to the conclusion that “The environment and security factors in using this technique in a real foreign situation force us to conclude that for our (intelligence) purposes, it would not be practical” The total cost of Operation Acoustic Kitty amounted to about $20 million (almost $192 million in 2025)
Oh, and it’s also my birthday today!