I came to post the same thing. I assume my cat liked the heat emanating from the CRT's vents on top.
Sounds like a good diy project with an old monitor and a raspberry pi...
I have an EGA monitor (one of the Thomsons), but a custom built USB CRTC/framebuffer (that uses SRAM from 386-486 motherboards I still have laying around somewhere) instead of RPi. It does not help with the cat though.