Web Obsession: Hello Kitty!

Still, the potential is mind-boggling, when you think about it. Even discounting for repeat clicking, Nora's piano playing has pulled almost as large an audience as this year's finale of Dancing With the Stars. What makes the cat-video phenomenon — and let's call it what it is, Internet kitty porn — all the more curious is the fact that it's exclusively cats. There are undoubtedly sidesplitting canine videos to be found online, and possibly one or two knee-slapping hamster movies, but it's mostly felines that are driving traffic. No other animal has so devoted and active a fan base. How come? What is it about cats that makes them so fascinating? Aside from the fact that some of them can play the piano?

''That's interesting — a cat playing a piano,'' ponders Alan M. Beck, director of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University's School of Veterinary Medicine and coauthor of Between Pets and People: The Importance of Animal Companionship. ''Humans have very complicated reactions to watching animals doing smart things. It amuses us but also makes us uncomfortable. We like to deny animal intelligence because it makes it easier for us to eat them. But why are cat videos in particular so popular? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that cats are very infantlike. Their faces are very babyish. Their meow is a very childlike sound. That's why people tend to get obsessed with them. Perhaps it's that same childlike quality that makes cats so popular on the Internet?''

In other words, they're cute. But after an exhaustive study of hundreds of online cat videos, photographs, cartoons, and tweets, we've come up with a theory of our own for why it's pussy galore online these days. For some reason, people expect cats to be smarter than other animals. We interpret their snooty aloofness as intelligence. So when we see one playing a piano, or doing something else humanlike, we're tickled to have our suspicions confirmed. The only thing that pleases us more is catching a cat doing something dumb, like falling into a fish tank or attacking a computer printer; that's a soothing reminder of our human superiority. Either way, it makes cat videos like Nora's ''Practice Makes Purr-fect'' irresistible even to people who don't much care for cats...or their atonal Gustavo Santaolalla-esque compositions.

''One day we heard this pinging noise downstairs and it was Nora playing the piano,'' says Betsy Alexander. ''Then she started coming downstairs when my music students were here. She'd get up on the other piano and start playing along with them. Especially when they played Bach — Nora loves Bach. My students helped me make a video of Nora and put it on YouTube so my niece could see it. That first day, the video had 71 viewings. The next, it was several hundred, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and millions. No, we haven't made a fortune, but that's not my dream. My dream as a piano teacher is that Nora inspires people to play the piano. If she can do it, anyone can.'' Just be grateful she didn't have a drum set in her living room.