Charlie Schmidt

Keyboard Cat is an internet meme. It consists of a video from 1984 of a female cat called "Fatso" wearing a blue shirt and "playing" an upbeat rhythm on an electronic keyboard. The video was posted to YouTube under the title "charlie schmidt's "cool cat"" in June 2007. Schmidt later changed the title to "Charlie Schmidt's Keyboard Cat (THE ORIGINAL)". Fatso (who died in 1987) was owned by Charlie Schmidt of Spokane, Washington, United States. Later, Brad O'Farrell, who was the syndication manager of the video website My Damn Channel, obtained Schmidt's permission to reuse the footage, appending it to the end of a blooper video to "play" that person offstage after the mistake or gaffe in a similar manner as getting the hook in the days of vaudeville. The appending of Schmidt's video to other blooper and other viral videos became popular, with such videos usually accompanied with the title Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat or a variant. "Keyboard Cat" was ranked No. 2 on Current TV's list of 50 Greatest Viral Videos. In 2009 Schmidt became owner of Bento, another cat that resembled Fatso, and which he used to create new Keyboard Cat videos, until Bento's death in March 2018. Schmidt has adopted a new cat "Skinny" or "Keyboard Cat 3.0", which has yet to become popular.