[Project Acoustic Kitty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty)  

Basically the CIA wanted to put microphones and transmitters inside of cats and use them to spy on the Soviets in the 1960s. It cost about $20 million and was a huge failure. Allegedly, the first attempt at this resulted in the cat running out into the street and getting run over by a car almost immediately.