A plea

[Carol Beigel]

I don't think it's a good idea to give anyone the picture that cats and 
pianos mix. This is the time of year when many people working in the piano 
business are especially overtired, oversheduled, working their last nerves, 
and could care less if they ever saw another piano or customer, so this 
little story, although it seemed hillarious at the time, might not sound so 
funny if you are a cat person.

  I was working for a large piano retailer and business was gangbusters 
during this holiday season.  People of all descriptions were buying pianos - 
I swear some of them thought they were stereo systems with strings!  Anyway 
this lady had just taken delivery of a baby grand piano, and the movers had 
just left.  Suddenly she hears her cat squalling because its foot is caught 
in the bass strings!  She calls the customer service department and our 
receptionist just lost it!  She was laughing so hard trying to page a 
technician.  You could hear this cat in the background over the speaker 
phone, and the lady was in such a panic.  The whole service department was 
in stitches while this poor woman was hysterical - and the cat kept howling 
in the background!  Finally, someone had the presence of mind to tell her to 
get a wooden spoon and pry the strings apart to get her cat's foot from 
between the strings.

I doubt you will get many positive responses from piano technicians about 
pictures of kittys on pianos.  Many  of us have the experience of removing 
cat pee from the knees of our pants due to working on pedal lyres on carpets 
in kitty homes.  And the list goes on....

Carol Beigel

>From: Kgj38@AOL.COM
>Reply-To: pianotech@ptg.org
>To: pianotech@ptg.org
>Subject: A plea
>Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 07:00:22 EST
>
>In a message dated 11/29/00 11:32:44 PM Central Standard Time,
>stephen_airy@yahoo.com writes:
>
><< Sometime I'm thinking
>  it would be interesting to use a picture of the piano for an album cover
>  (it's a player piano so it has sliding doors on the front panel -- I'm
>  thinking it might be cute to put the cat in there and then have her 
>looking
>  out the slot in the middle). >>
>
>For goodness sake!  As a piano lover and a cat person, I implore you to not
>do that!  Pianos and cats do not mix well and a cat is not a prop for cute
>album covers.
>
>Trying to hold my tongue before I say too much,
>Karen Johnson, Associate
>Rochester, MN
>(typing while 12 week old kitten is sitting in my lap)
>

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