Charlie Schmidt is a local “celebrity” from nearby Spokane. Keyboard cat isn’t his only contribution to raising local culture. He also won several art and performance awards for live performances.
I don’t know about “original”… We had a cat that liked playing the piano back in the 90s, and I imagine that she was far from the first, either. Probably there have been feline pianists for nearly as long as there have been pianos.
My first kitty liked to occasionally wander across the piano keys. We guess he got chased onto the keys by a littermate at some point, liked the sound and started his keyboard wandering.
He scared the living daylights out of my sister the first time, though. She was home alone and heard him walking. She was all “ghost? Burglar? But why would a burglar be playing the piano?”, then snuck over to the living room and peered around the corner and saw him walking back and forth.
Advantages of living with cats? One is, if there are weird noises in the night, you can always think ‘It must be the cats!’ and go back to sleep.
If you wake up and there are weird noises and all the cats are asleep on the bed: ‘well, if it were serious trouble, the cats would be awake!’ So if they’re asleep, you can go back to sleep too.
If you wake up and the cats are on the bed, but wide awake and staring intently at something you can’t see: ‘eerie beings are the cats’ business, they can see them and I can’t. The cats will take care of it, I can go back to sleep.’
– I ran through that sequence once for a friend and he looked at me and said ‘But what if it’s a real live burglar?’
I said, “That’s the dog’s job!”
.
;
(in practice, if the noises are suspicious enough, I get up and check. But so far it always has been a cat. Or the dog.)