An honorable mention

Professor/Rabbi Cotel is said to have inspired hundreds of aspiring composers — and one cat.

In 1996, while he was at his piano playing Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier,” his 3-year-old cat, Ketzel, pounced on the keyboard. The professor grabbed a pencil and inscribed a descending paw pattern from treble to bass. A year later, he entered the score — if one can call it that — in the Paris New Music Review’s One-Minute Competition, open to pieces of no more than 60 seconds.

The judges gave Ketzel an honorable mention.