When Octave Electronics released the Cat in 1976, they managed something remarkable: a synthesizer that could go toe-to-toe with the Minimoog and ARP Odyssey while undercutting them on price, all while introducing features those legends didn't have. The Cat's secret weapon was its approach to oscillator design, which let you blend multiple waveforms from each VCO simultaneously rather than picking just one—a departure that gave it a distinctly fatter, more aggressive character than its competitors.
The Cat packs two voltage-controlled oscillators with a waveform mixer that's genuinely unusual for the era. VCO 1 offers sawtooth, triangle, and pulse with pulse-width modulation, while VCO 2 covers square and sawtooth, and both feed into sub-oscillator outputs you can blend in. The real magic happens when you engage cross-modulation: not only can one oscillator modulate the other, but both can modulate each other simultaneously, opening up everything from nuanced bass movement to wild, screaming leads. The four-pole lowpass filter is aggressive and resonant, and the modulation section includes two envelope generators (ADSR and AR), an LFO, and sample-and-hold circuitry. The 37-key keyboard spans three octaves and handles duophonic playing, meaning you can trigger two separate voices at once—one routed to each oscillator—or stack them in mono mode for thicker single-note sounds. A non-sprung pitch slider lets you bend notes, and the back panel includes pedal inputs for filter cutoff and portamento control, plus external audio input so you can process other sources through the Cat's filter or feed its output back into itself for creative feedback.
The Cat earned respect among players and designers for its flexibility and sonic aggression, particularly for bass and lead work. It remained in production through the early 1980s with several revisions, including the SRM models that added sample-and-hold circuits for each voice and an improved filter design. While early versions had some quirks with CV and Gate implementation, later models sorted these issues out.
