Operation Acoustic Kitty
The cold war. Things looked bad in the nineteen fifties and sixties. Really all through the eighties but for now, it's the sixties. The US and Soviets were faced with mutually assured destruction if they ever used the bomb. You've probably seen the old test (and practical application) footage of the bomb; not a pretty sight. It became super important for the two powers to know what each other was doing. You don't need to get a secret message from "Q" to know there were all means of crazy-cool spy-tech around at the time. This one has to win the crazy award though.
Operation Acoustic Kitty
This was a scheme cooked up by a certain US intelligence agency that handles spys. This story is mired in legend and its hard to know what's true. But the deal is, there was an ambassador or some sort head-honcho from one of the communist countries they had their eye on. He liked cats and would feed strays that came in with his own cats at his home. The idea was to surgically implant cats with a microphone in the ear, a battery in the chest cavity and transmitting antenna wire down the tail. The cats survived surgery and fully recuperated. They became living, breathing, meowing walkie-talkies.
The plan was a to get close to the official's house and introduce an Acoustic Kitty with the strays that hung around there. Hopefully, it would follow the other cats inside when the official fed them. With luck, acoustic kitty could hear and transmit what ever the foreign official was saying to intelligence. (Provided acoustic kitty is close by.)
Now at this point, you must be wondering if the idea is genius or insane.
I'm wondering the same thing as I can't find confirmation that it worked or not. Some say a cat didn't cooperate and got stuck in a tree which caused a lot of attention and got the project canceled. Others say one poor acoustic kitty got run over by a cab on the first mission and they scraped the program removed the implants from the others.
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I don't know which is true. Maybe none. Maybe it worked.
What I find so intriguing is the lengths intelligence was willing to go for some information. Makes you realize how high the stakes were then. They obviously shouldn't do stuff like this to animals. It's not cool and for all we know didn't work and still kinda sucks the cats had to go through all that. (Even if you believe the happy story where they removed the implants from the others and the cats recovered and given homes.)
It's crazy to think of this real-life story that's straight out of Get Smart or Inspector Gadget being real as the money invested in it. This bionic Acoustic Kitty that might have gotten smooshed by cab, or (overheard the information that saved the world) is a reminder of a time when anything seemed possible, no matter how dumb or straight-up ridiculous. Kinda makes you wonder huh?
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