In the 1960s, the CIA tried to turn a cat into a listening device. It wasn’t satire—it was Project Acoustic Kitty, a real covert program that implanted microphones, transmitters, and antennas into a living cat’s body in hopes of eavesdropping on Soviet diplomats. In this strange and unsettling bonus episode of Phantom Bytes, we explore how this bizarre Cold War experiment reflects the modern truth of surveillance: from smart devices to listening toys, the absurd is no longer impossible—it’s operational.