Nora the Piano Cat
You might remember it as CATcerto
Viral animals9 of 9
2007·Early YouTube·skill
A rescued tabby who played the piano seriously enough that an orchestra wrote a concerto around her.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- CATcerto
- Spread in
- 2007
- Began as
- A video upload
- Where it started
- youtube
- Format
- Video
- Origin
- Origin not yet established
- Available
- Playable from the source
What this wasThe story
Nora, a grey tabby rescued from the streets of Camden, New Jersey, sits at an upright piano and plays — deliberately, with both paws, apparently listening. Her owners filmed her and posted it in 2007. The Times described the result as somewhere between Philip Glass and free jazz.
She is one of the two piano-playing cats of the early YouTube era and, unlike the other, she was actually playing. The National Science Foundation used her footage in a museum exhibit on animal behaviour, and Pianist Magazine wrote about her, which is an unusual pair of institutions to take an interest in a cat video.
In 2009 the Lithuanian composer Mindaugas Piečaitis notated Nora's melody from the YouTube recording, scored a four-minute chamber orchestra accompaniment around it, and premiered CATcerto at the Klaipėda Concert Hall on 5 June 2009 with the video projected above the players. Guinness recognises it as the first piano concerto for a cat. Nora died in February 2024, aged nineteen.
Why it is here: it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
This is the copy ViralWorld can show you. Whether it is the first is not established.
Where it came fromWhat we know
Original source uncertain. This is the earliest copy currently known.
No original upload has been established for this record. The index is showing the earliest copy it currently knows about, and says so rather than guessing.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
