A bafflingly cruel and nonsensical experiment, and we might rejoice to know it probably never took place. But the bizarre idea of the cat piano, or Katzenklavier, did not spring from the weird delusions of one sadistic psychiatrist. It was supposedly invented by German polymath and Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), who has been called “the last Renaissance man” and who made pioneering discoveries in the fields of microbiology, geology, and comparative religion. He was a serious scholar and a man of science. Maybe the Katzenklavier was intended as a sick joke that others took seriously---and for a very long time at that. The illustration of a Katzenklavier above dates from 1667, the one below from 1883.
I’d never heard of this, but I’m sure it inspired this Monty Python sketch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OXfAPPckQUReport
Available today, through the miracle of sampling and frequency shifting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMD7tDUhL_wReport