Nora the piano playing cat video has been around for at least a year, but as usual I’m one of the last to discover her. Nora caught my attention because she makes me think of Tabitha, a stray cat we picked up literally in the middle of the street (we first saw her right under the traffic light) in downtown Grove City, Ohio. All the cars literally came to a stop as this tiny little cat who seemed too young to even be weaned yet dashed through the light and hightailed it to a bakery shop on the other side before she disappeared from view.

Our girls were young at the time, and they and we were very concerned about this tiny and obviously stray kitten so we drove to the parking lot behind the bakery to find out what happened to her. We found her, meowing and scared to death. Naturally we couldn’t leave her there to who knows what fate, so we drove home with her yeoling to high heaven all the way.

We fully intended to feed her, nurse her back to health and find a good home for her. You soft hearts know what happened next I’m sure. After the big veterinarian’s bill for getting her back to good shape, enticing her to eat with canned white chicken meat and milk to drink, no one was willing to take her. She was a very plain brindled cat like you’d see in a farmer’s barn and no one but us could apparently see her beauty. By this time we’d taken her into our hearts as well as our home. She stayed, joining our other cat, Mr. Tibbs, and lived to be 17 years old. We named her Tabitha, though I often thought of her as “Beethoven’s Cat,” because of how she loved to jump up on a soft chair to listen and purr when I played the piano. She seemed especially enamored of The Moonlight Sonata.

So here’s a video featuring new footage of Nora (after the media blitz of a year ago) that is even better than the original version I saw. Nora’s “person” is a piano teacher. She says Nora began sitting at the piano when she was about a year old, and she’s a little over three now. This isn’t a trick she taught Nora, and anyone who’s had a cat knows she plays only when the mood strikes her, which is usually several times a day for short periods. Everytime I watch it, I think of Tabitha. Here’s looking at you, Tabs! 

[4 minutes, 8 seconds]