Project Acoustic Kitty

In the 1960s, the CIA spent $20 million on 'Acoustic Kitty,' a project to turn cats into mobile listening devices to spy on the Soviets. Veterinary and electronic engineers surgically implanted a microphone in a cat's ear canal, a small radio transmitter at the base of its skull, and a wire antenna woven into its fur. The battery was hidden in its chest. The first mission was to eavesdrop on two men in a park outside the Soviet compound in Washington D.C. The cat was released nearby, but immediately wandered into the street and was hit by a taxi. The project was abandoned in 1967 after determining that cats were too unreliable—they got distracted by hunger, sounds, and simply didn't follow orders. Declassified documents later revealed the CIA concluded that training cats for covert operations was 'not practical.' The project remains one of the CIA's strangest Cold War programs.