Keyboard Cat is an Internet meme. It consists of a video from 1984 of a female cat called "Fatso" wearing a blue shirt and "playing" an upbeat rhythm on an electronic keyboard. The video was posted to YouTube under the title "charlie schmidt's cool cats" in June 2007. Schmidt later changed the title to "Charlie Schmidt's Keyboard Cat (THE ORIGINAL)".
Fatso (who died in 1987) was owned (and manipulated in the video) by Charlie Schmidt of Spokane, Washington, United States. Later, Brad O'Farrell, who was the syndication manager of the video website My Damn Channel, obtained Schmidt's permission to reuse the footage, appending it to the end of a blooper video to "play" that person offstage after the mistake or gaffe in a similar manner as getting the hook in the days of vaudeville. The appending of Schmidt's video to other blooper and other viral videos became popular, with such videos usually accompanied with the title Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat or a variant. "Keyboard Cat" was ranked No. 2 on Current TV's list of 50 Greatest Viral Videos.
Later, in 2009, Schmidt became owner of Bento, another cat that resembled Fatso, and which he used to create new Keyboard Cat videos, until Bento's death in 2018.
Videos
A look back at the life of Bento, the Keyboard Cat - Bento, the Keyboard Cat, died of cancer on March 8. His YouTube videos of keyboard renditions of popular songs were watched by millions. Subscribe to The Washington Post on YouTube: http://bit.ly/2...
The first such "Keyboard Cat" video, entitled "Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat" was created by Brad O'Farrell, who both secured Schmidt's permission to use footage and asked Schmidt to allow anyone to use the footage with or without permission. Over four thousand such videos now exist, with a website created to collect them.
Other appearances
The Keyboard Cat meme has been spoofed several times on television. Keyboard Cat was popularized by Stephen Colbert on May 18, 2009, during a "toss" with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. At the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, Andy Samberg's opening monologue suggested that award winners whose speech went on too long would be played off by Keyboard Cat. Kato Kaelin also spoofed Keyboard Cat in a segment of Tosh.0 entitled "Keyboard Kato" in the series first episode. A television advertisement for Wonderful Pistachios features Bento, Charlie Schmidt's current Keyboard Cat, cracking one of the nuts during the song. Bento died on March 8, 2018. In the Mad episode "Avaturd / CSiCarly", Keyboard Cat is shown to be the music leader of the Na'vi alongside other famous blue characters in a spoof of the James Cameron film Avatar.
The meme has also appeared in various video games. In the Nintendo DS game, Scribblenauts, in which the player can summon numerous objects to assist in solving puzzles, Keyboard Cat appears as one of several possible Internet memes that can be called up in the game. The timing of the popularity of the Keyboard Cat meme with the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo Convention was considered partially responsible for Scribblenauts' success during the convention. An easter egg in Activision Blizzard's announcement for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm reveals the game's antagonist, Deathwing, playing a keyboard with the text "Keyboard Cataclysm: Play 'em Off, Deathwing". A teaser video from Ubisoft for its video game Splinter Cell: Conviction, entitled "Play Him Off, Keyboard Sam" parodies the Keyboard Cat theme. The Xbox Live Arcade remake of Earthworm Jim includes additional content, including one boss character inspired by Keyboard Cat. The animated series, Transformers: Rescue Bots "Shake Up" has a reference to Keyboard Cat in Frankie Greene's video, depicted a cat playing a keyboard in a similar manner.
During Weezer's 2009 summer tour with Blink-182, Keyboard Cat would play the band off every night at the end of their set.
The Keyboard Cat was featured in a cinema spot promoting the UK's EE telecom network, and most recently in the 2014 reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Keyboard Cat also appeared and revealed herself to be a fan of the Carolina Panthers in a National Football League advertisement that first aired during Super Bowl XLIX.
The Keyboard Cat appeared on one episode Hawaii Five-0 Season 6 Episode 22.
On the homepage of the popular online game Bin Weevils, one can get a glimpse of a large television screen at the Drive-In Cinema where a "bin pet"-ified Keyboard Cat can be seen.
Other memes
The Keyboard Cat meme has been integrated into other memes. An 8-bit version of both the cat and the song have been created. Online clothing vendor Threadless sells a "Three Keyboard Cat Moon" T-shirt based on the infamous Three Wolf Moon design; the shirt design was one of the most popular that the company has had, and they have had difficulties in meeting the demand for the shirt. The shirt appeared in a television ad for the release of the PlayStation 3 Slim game console. G4TV's Attack of the Show held a "Great American Keyboard Cat Competition" to give viewers a chance to create their own Keyboard Cat-inspired art, with over one hundred pieces submitted. Several of the top works from this were given to the charity Kitten Rescue to be auctioned off through eBay. The MLB AL East Champion Tampa Bay Rays used a variation known as "Rays Keyboard Kitty" (they also had one called "DJ Kitty") to rouse the crowd during its late season run, using a similar cat in Rays gear in several segments. On April 1, 2011, YouTube released a video showing the "Top 5 Viral Pictures of 1911", including a parody of Keyboard Cat titled "Flugelhorn Feline".
In one example, Keyboard Cat was appended to the end of a segment of Desperate Lives (1982), a made-for-TV movie starring Helen Hunt showing the effects of drug use (with Keyboard Cat starting after Hunt's character falls out a window and suffers from overdosing); after the video, the submitter then superimposed Keyboard Cat in the music video for Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams". The music video segment has been jokingly called by some the "greatest music video ever." While the video still exists at YouTube, copyright issues with Warner Music Group have forced YouTube to disable the audio. The move has alerted groups concerned about copyrights and the remix culture to warn about potential limitation of creative expression through such actions.
Lawsuit
On June 21, 2011, Schmidt filed a lawsuit in Seattle Federal Court against Threadless for their 2009 line of Three Keyboard Cat Moon T-shirts, a send up of the then popular Three Wolf Moon meme, due to copyright infringement. Threadless counter-claimed by stating that Schmidt's copyright claim was not approved until September 22, 2010, more than a year after the production of the T-shirts, and that Schmidt had lost his copyright when he asked people to submit videos that paid tribute to Fatso. As of May 2013, this lawsuit has been settled.
In May 2013, Schmidt and Christopher Torres, the creator of Nyan Cat, jointly sued 5th Cell and Warner Bros. for copyright infringement and trademark infringement over the appearance of these characters without permission in the Scribblenauts series of video games. Torres and Schmidt have both registered copyrights on their characters and have pending trademark applications on the names. Meme manager Ben Lashes manages them and Grumpy Cat, Scumbag Steve and Ridiculously Photogenic Guy. The suit was settled in September 2013, with Torres and Schmidt being paid for the use of the characters.
See also
- Cat organ
- Cats and the Internet
- List of Internet phenomena
References
External links
- Charlie Schmidt's site
- A collection of videos featuring Keyboard Cat
- The Keyboard Cat Church