The CIA Spent Millions Turning a Cat Into a Spy Device

In the 1960s, the CIA launched a project called Acoustic Kitty, in which cats were surgically fitted with a microphone, a radio transmitter, and an antenna hidden in the tail.

The goal was to create a seemingly innocent animal that could freely roam near diplomats’ conversations and relay the recorded audio to agents at a distance.

According to available accounts, the program cost the equivalent of several million dollars, but ran into a fundamental problem — cats are notoriously hard to train to follow orders and walk in a specific direction instead of pursuing their own agenda.

The project was ultimately deemed impractical and shut down in the early 1970s, with details only made public decades later after part of the CIA’s files were declassified.