Illustration by Jan A. Igoe
When I was growing up, we were surrounded by G-men posing as neighbors. My siblings and I knew they worked for the FBI, but we didn’t know what their actual jobs were, and our parents made us promise not to ask. They seemed more like your regular lawn-mowing dads in Bermuda shorts than special agents, but it takes more than hairy legs to be sure.
Meanwhile, down the street, there was a dad who worked for the CIA who did not seem regular at all. He mowed his lawn in a long, dark trenchcoat, black hat and opaque shades—your standard suburban spy uniform. My mom always suspected his next mission might be to steal her family’s chocolate cupcake recipe, so she cautioned us not to utter the secret ingredient, even under torture.
I knew we weren’t in any danger because, between you and me, those cupcakes were dreadful. She added a pound of “secret mayonnaise” to every batch, so no one wanted to eat them, let alone steal them. Not even the CIA dad. He never once tried to capture her baked goods, no matter how hard we prayed he would. He didn’t realize how Mom’s cupcakes could revolutionize the agency’s interrogation techniques. Forget waterboarding. Just dangle one over a high-value target and watch those national secrets come spilling out.
But the CIA missed the mark on cupcakes. And also cats. During last century’s hippie era, they did some pretty weird things, from experimenting with mind control and LSD, to tracking enemy troop movements with transmitters buried in tiger poop. No kidding: their exploits are all over the web.
Their craziest experiment was probably the cat. Out of zillions of cats in the world, one unfortunate, nameless beast was deemed (or doomed) the first feline secret agent. I’m fairly certain the cat did not volunteer.
At that time, the thinking was that nobody would pay much attention to a random cat strutting by a foreign embassy or wandering through an enemy compound. No one would stop to ask, “Hey Boris, is this ‘bring your cat to work’ day?”
So, the CIA folks surgically implanted a tiny transmitter in the cat’s skull and placed a battery pack in its chest. They hid a microphone in the cat’s ear canal and wired an antenna into its fur from neck to tail. Then, all they had to do was tell the cat where to go. (The cat probably wanted to tell them where to go, too.)
By the time the CIA realized that cats, even bionic ones, don’t follow orders, their Acoustic Kitty was worth $20 million. When actor Lee Majors played the bionic man in a popular TV series from that era, he was only worth $6 million (and he took direction).
When the spy cat finally made its debut near the Soviet compound in Washington, DC, it got about 10 feet before being hit by a car. Some say it was a taxi. I firmly believe the cat was either hailing that cab or made an intentional decision to commit suicide.
Since then, the CIA has given up training feline spies. But if there are any more Acoustic Kitties running around, it will probably take us a few decades of wading through zillions of redacted documents to find out. So if you do spy an unfamiliar cat, please don’t tell it about the mayonnaise.
Jan A. Igoe is allergic to cats, mayonnaise and possibly the CIA. She wishes everyone wonderful health and joy in 2023. Please drop by HumorMe@SCLiving.coop to say hi.