Athanasius Kircher's Cat Piano

Athanasius Kircher first described the cat piano in his landmark 1650 work Musurgia Universalis:

"In order to raise the spirits of an Italian prince burdened by the cares of his position, a musician created for him a cat piano. The musician selected cats whose natural voices were at different pitches and arranged them in cages side by side, so that when a key on the piano was depressed, a mechanism drove a sharp spike into the appropriate cat’s tail. The result was a melody of meows that became more vigorous as the cats became more desperate. Who could not help but laugh at such music? Thus was the prince raised from his melancholy."

I don't agree with the "mechanism driving a spike into a cat's tail" part, but the picture looks hilarious.