Meow Mix dares pet parents to listen to its famous jingle for 12 hours [Video]

There are few advertising jingles more recognizable than that of Meow Mix, a simple but melodic 16-note repetition of the word “Meow” sung by a cat — actually a woman named Linda November pretending to be a cat — that has become one of advertising’s most famous earworms.

The Meow Mix jingle has been remade countless times since its 1974 introduction — including by a former member of boy band *NSYNC — and even reportedly used as a form of torture by the CIA, which, according to Terry O’Reilly’s popular CBC podcast Under the Influence, was fond of using songs that were either “offensive or incredibly annoying.”

There is, of course, a fine line between an earworm and an all-out aural assault, and Meow Mix is humorously attempting to discover the outer limits of cat-lovers’ affection for their pet with a new campaign from Leo Burnett Toronto called the “Meow-a-Thon.”

The idea is simple: People are …