Keyboard Cat Screensaver_
What is this?
Scenes
Keyboard shortcuts
Related searches
Guide — an original cat that plays you off, fullscreen
An original cartoon cat taps a keyboard under the “Play ’em off!” caption, with floating notes, four scenes and an optional original chiptune. Nothing to install.Choose Stage, Disco, VHS or Calm, or press 1 to 4. Disco sets the tempo to 7, Calm to 3 and the other two to 5.
Drag Tempo from 1 to 10 to speed up the paw taps, the head bob and the stream of notes. With the music on, the tune runs from 79 BPM at 1 to 160 BPM at 10 (115 by default).
Toggle the pulsing Caption (or press C), the Floating notes and the Scanlines.
Turn on 8-bit chiptune or press M for an original 16-note melody with a bass line, generated in your browser. It is off until you switch it on and goes quiet while paused.
Press Enter Fullscreen, click the scene or press F. Move the mouse for the Exit Fullscreen and Pause buttons; Space pauses, R resets, Esc leaves.
Scenes and shortcuts
- 1 Stage
- Dark blue backdrop under a warm spotlight
- 2 Disco
- Colour-cycling background, faster tempo
- 3 VHS
- Sepia tint
- 4 Calm
- Darker and slower
- F
- Fullscreen on/off
- Space
- Pause / resume
- M
- Chiptune on/off
- C
- Caption on/off
- 1–4
- Switch scene
- R
- Reset to defaults
- Esc
- Leave fullscreen
- TV / monitor
- Open the page, press F, leave the cat playing
- screen sleep
- The page does not keep the display awake: set your sleep timer to Never while it runs
- reset
- Restores Stage, tempo 5 and all overlays on; it leaves the music as it is
Keyboard Cat, explained
What is Keyboard Cat?
Keyboard Cat is a short clip that artist Charlie Schmidt filmed in 1984 of his cat Fatso, who appears to play a jaunty tune on an electronic keyboard. Schmidt uploaded it to YouTube in 2007, and in 2009 Brad O’Farrell began adding it to the end of blooper videos to “play off” people who failed on camera. “Play him off, Keyboard Cat” quickly became one of the best-known memes of that year.
Is this the real Keyboard Cat?
No. The cat here is an original cartoon character drawn with JavaScript on an HTML5 canvas, and the music is an original chiptune, so no footage, photo or recording from the clip is used. It is an unaffiliated homage to the “play him off” meme.
Does it have sound?
Optionally. Turn on 8-bit chiptune (or press M) and an original 16-note square-wave melody with a triangle-wave bass loops, generated live with the Web Audio API. Its tempo follows the Tempo slider (79 to 160 BPM) and it goes quiet while the scene is paused. It is not the clip’s music, and it stays off until you switch it on.
How do I run it fullscreen?
Click the scene, press Enter Fullscreen or press F. Move the mouse to show the Exit Fullscreen and Pause buttons, which hide again after 2.5 seconds, or press Esc (or F again) to leave.