Move over, Snoop Doggy Dogg and tell Lassie the news - the Jingle Cats are out to take over the top spot on the nation's pop charts.
The Cats - featured on this holiday season's surprise novelty disc, "The Jingle Cats' Meowy Christmas" - are real, live cats. For 50 minutes, these musical kitties meow their way through 20 Christmas favorites, with help from their human benefactor, musician and sound engineer Mike Spalla.Spalla got the idea to record the meows of his nine cats more than a year ago, while working at home.
"My cats were meowing at me for some reason," he said. "I was thinking that these musical meows were just great. It was as if the cats were creating a chord."
Spalla did a little high-tech "tweaking," adding musical accompaniment and harmonizing and he had the seeds of a hit concept. He rushed nine songs out to radio stations in time for last Christmas.
"When they played it, the telephone response was terrific," said Spalla, 34. "So, I decided to do an even better version for this Christmas."
It wasn't just a matter of luring the cats into performing in exchange for a bowl of warm milk or some canned food. Spalla was surreptitious, stalking his kitties with hidden microphones.
"I had to learn to think like a cat," he said. "To get them to meow, I would do things like open a can of cat food. But they soon realized that whenever I had a mike in my hand, something was up. That's when I hit on the idea of playing their meows back into their headphones."
Headphones?
"Yeah, I'd hold headphones onto their ears," Spalla explained. "They would meow when they'd hear their own meows. By the end, I had 30 hours of meows on tape."
Spalla's album contains such holiday staples as "O Christmas Tree," "O Come All Ye Faithful" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem." It's priced $7.99 for cassette, $15.99 for CD and is available in music stores or by mail order at slightly higher prices.