Keyboard Cat
You might remember it as Play him off, Play Him Off Keyboard Cat
Viral classics9 of 40
2007·Early YouTube·funny
The clip a generation used to end an embarrassment: a cat in a blue t-shirt, playing an upbeat rhythm on a keyboard, appended to somebody else’s worst moment.
The line people quote“Play him off”
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- Play Him Off Keyboard Cat
- First known
- 2007
- Began as
- A video upload
- Format
- Video
- Made by
- Charlie Schmidt, of Spokane, Washington
- Who or what it shows
- Fatso, his cat, born in 1978, who died around 1999
- Recorded
- 1984, on VHS, at an Ensoniq Mirage sampling keyboard
- Original title
- “charlie schmidt’s ‘cool cat’”
- Used to say
- That went badly. Play them off
- Origin
- Likely original upload
- Available
- Playable from the source
What this wasThe story
A cat in an infant’s blue t-shirt appears to play an upbeat rhythm on a sampling keyboard. Charlie Schmidt is behind it, moving the cat’s paws with his hands hidden under the shirt. The cat is Fatso, and the tape is from 1984.
Fatso died around 1999, about fifteen years after the tape was made and before it was ever uploaded. Schmidt introduced a successor, Bento, in 2010, and a third cat in 2019 after Bento died. The clip has since appeared in games, adverts and television.
Why it matteredWhat changed
It turned a video into a tool. Nobody shared Keyboard Cat to show the cat; they stuck it on the end of somebody else’s failure to play them off stage, and within three months there were two hundred of those.
TimelineIn order
- Made
Charlie Schmidt records his cat Fatso at a keyboard, working the cat’s paws from out of shot.1
- Posted
Schmidt uploads the tape to YouTube as “charlie schmidt’s ‘cool cat’”.1
- Remixed
Brad O’Farrell appends the footage to a blooper and titles it “Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat”.1
- Took off
At least two hundred Play Him Off videos now exist, helped by an Associated Press story and a tweet from Ashton Kutcher.1
- Later
Schmidt releases “Keyboard Cat REINCARNATED!” with a second cat, Bento.1
- Later
Schmidt and Christopher Torres, who made Nyan Cat, sue Warner Bros. over the use of both characters in the Scribblenauts games. The case is settled that September with both men paid.1
- Later
Bento dies, aged nine. A third cat, Skinny, is announced as his successor a year later.1
The version you rememberNot the same thing
A 2009 format: a few seconds of the cat at the keyboard cut onto the end of somebody else’s mishap.1
Recorded by Charlie Schmidt twenty-five years before anybody else saw it, and not uploaded until June 2007.1
What people misrememberSet straight
Commonly remembered asA 2007 or 2009 video.
ActuallyThe tape was made in 1984. It reached YouTube in 2007 and became a meme in 2009.1
Commonly remembered asThe cat is playing.
ActuallySchmidt is moving Fatso’s paws with his own hands, hidden under the shirt.1
Commonly remembered asFatso died in 1987, three years after the tape was made.
ActuallyThat date was reported in 2009 and was wrong. In a 2026 livestream Schmidt’s wife Joanne recalled the cat still being alive when their daughter, born in 1998, was an infant, and estimated that he died around 1999.1
LegacyWhat it left behind
- The 2013 settlement was an early case of meme creators being paid by a games publisher for characters that had been treated as common property.1
More from hereIn this collection
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · a moment that changed what the internet did next · still being watched and quoted years later
Where it came fromWhat we know
High-confidence original source.
Earliest known source: YouTube
Created by Charlie Schmidt. Established by research, not by who posted the copy shown here.
- When
- Originally published c. 2007.
- Where
- Known on YouTube.
More from 2007You were there
More from early YouTubeMore of the archive
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things