Seven Up!Date #2: Our Player Piano

Explanation Number Two of my response to Melissa's Meme on January 24:

2. We have an antique player piano. No one's allowed to play it. EV.ER. I mean it. And yet the cats obstinately refuse to respect my ahthorita'. On a daily basis. Yes, the cover's closed.

It's beautiful. Perfect condition on the outside. But the player mechanism is out of order. We were told it is easily repairable, and would only cost maybe $800. Considering we were given this lovely instrument and it is worth quite a number of thousands of dollars (especially because it has its original piano bench), that seems reasonable. But we don't have that in the budget at this time.

Nor do we have any piano rolls.

Not a problem, as any player piano is also useful as a regular piano. We should be able to open the lid to the keys (I'm not a pianist, I don't know the terminology) and just start Joplin-ing away, right?

WRONG. Emphatic wrong.

This beautiful, elegant, upright piece of furniture is a cat lounge and wallet keeper because of the UNGODLY NOISE of the BEYOND OUT OF TUNE-NESS of the poor, unloved piano strings within. Dinn? Cacophony? Oh, either of those would be lovely in comparison.

(A piano tuner is out of our budget, too.)

Well, then. How do the cats play it?

They jump down onto the cover that shields the keys. It bends, ever so slightly, and hits the keys. We get the sound of either the opening chord of "Hard Day's Night" or the final chord of "A Day In the Life", both by the Beatles, and both raucously out of tune. It's LOUD. It almost always startles. These cats, BEING cats, have remarkable timing. Put your imagination to work. You'll come up with great results. Probably most of them will be close (if not spot on) to what we have experienced.

Need I mention that the cats never look at the clock before jumping on the piano keys?

"So? Put the damper down!" comes the cry of those in the know. Yes, well we would, but the broken player mechanism is in the way, and we can't do that until the mechanism is repaired or removed.

Mostly, we just laugh. Fortunately, cats jumping up and down on the piano key-cover doesn't happen hugely frequently. Not even everyday. Someday we will get this fixed and it will cease to be a problem. Then I'll start trolling eBay for player piano rolls, heavy on Scott Joplin.

I'm really looking forward to that day.