The cat is on the floor, looking up at me and yelling as I type this. My original plan was for a piece on ‘Pets In Space’, but she’s threatened to vomit on my bed, under the covers, if I don’t focus solely on cats. Why? Because cats are better than dogs. I am typing this of my own free will. Please send salmon.
In all seriousness though, even dog lovers have to admit that cats would make better pets aboard a space craft: they don’t require as much food as any but the smallest dogs, unlike many dog breeds they don’t need a lot of space to run around, and they’re great at catching the rodents chewing on the cables of the life-support system.
Now, with that debate settled, let’s look at some of the best cats in space across literature, comics, film, and video games.
The Kilrathi from Wing Commander
Wing Commander is a series of classic, well-regarded space combat games, and one, well, poorly-regarded film. For comparison, 1994’s Wing Commander III featured Full Motion Video cutscenes with a cast that included Mark Hamill, Malcom McDowell, and John Rhys-Davies, while 1999’s Wing Commander film starred… Freddie Prinze Jr.
But we’re not here to talk about humans and their command of wings, we’re here to talk about cats. With Wing Commander we aren’t talking about cuddly-yet-vicious pets, no, we’re talking about the Kilrathi – a sentient race of glorious, bipedal cat people!
Just look at all that majesty! These warriors are 2 metres tall, with teeth and claws to match, and are far stronger – and fluffier – than humans. At this stage, I’m not sure if they poop in a box, but they sure as heck can develop interstellar travel, build a galaxy-spanning empire, and go to war against those pesky shaved apes (that’s us, BTW).
Lying Cat from Saga by Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples
Saga is a fantastic science fiction comic written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Fiona Staples. It’s big, bold, colourful, weird, and well worth your time. Amongst Saga’s cast of characters is The Will, a freelance bounty hunter, with a sidekick cat – appropriately called Lying Cat – who can tell when a person is lying and isn’t shy about calling them out on it. While The Will makes good use of Lying Cat’s ability, half the fun of their interactions is when he’s caught out bluffing by his own pet.
Lying Cat is a unique and entertaining character in a comic full of great characters. Not only that, but some people, for some strange reason, say that Lying Cat is a perfect mascot for politics in 2017. 11/10, would scratch chin and tell truths.
Spot from Star Trek: The Next Generation
In Star Trek: TNG the crew of the Enterprise was a varied bunch. As well as the expected vanilla humans, you’ve also got Worf the Klingon, Deanna Troi the half-human, half-Betazoid counsellor, the android Data, and most importantly of all, Data’s pet cat Spot – the heroic feline who saved the crew from a devolution virus (sort of), and (kinda) taught Data how to feel. Beyond that though, I just find it heartening to know that far in the future, when mankind has joined a utopian Federation of alien races, people will still struggle with getting their cats to behave… and that cats will be just as fussy about their food as they are now.
Aineko from Accelerando by Charles Stross
Accelerando, by Charles Stross, is idea-dense, weird, brilliant, and encompasses so much about technology, politics, business, transhumanism and the future of humanity, whilst still telling a compelling story about family. Not only that, but Stross offers the ebook for free on his website.
I might be cheating somewhat with this entry, because Aineko isn’t a cat in the strictest sense, but rather, a cat-like robot… But if I can include sentient cat aliens in this list, then cat robots are fair game too.
Now, a robocat could be interesting enough on its own, but Stross doesn’t stop there. Hell, with the sheer creative madness on display in Accelerando, I don’t think Stross could have stopped there if he wanted to. See, whilst Aineko might start off as little more than a consumer-grade product, hacks and upgrades see the catbot growing increasingly more intelligent, eventually [SPOILER WARNING] becoming a sort of digital cat god. And really, isn’t godhood what every cat wants, nay, deserves?
I can’t remember if Aineko technically goes into space, but, like, when you’re a being of pure information what even is space, maaaan?
Jones from Alien
One of these creatures is an apex predator with razor-sharp claws and a complete disregard for humanity. The other is a xenomorph. The titular alien from the 1979 film Alien is a horrifying and agile parasitic beast with a tough carapace, a blade for a tail and acid for blood, which is born by literally tearing through a person’s ribcage… and yet it still wasn’t able to kill a cat. Why? Because cats are the best. Don’t @ me.
Even if you haven’t seen the film, I’m sure you can imagine that things don’t go well for the crew of the Nostromo when they cross paths with the xenomorph. But the alien critter didn’t count on the grit of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), or the survivability of your average house (ship?) cat. While Jones the cat might not be of much use to Ripley in outmaneuvering and [38 YEAR-OLD SPOILER WARNING] eventually dispatching the alien, just the fact that the cat survived one of the most terrifying and tense massacres in the history of science fiction cinema makes Jones the Official BEST CAT IN SPACE (Which Is Really A Real Award)™
Honourable mentions:
- Red Dwarf – The Cat: Honestly, I always thought he was some sort of greaser vampire.
- Samurai Pizza Cats: They’re samurai cats in super-armour who fight evil, break through the fourth wall, AND make pizza – what’s not to love? Sadly, they spend most of their time on the ground… because in space, no one can smell you cooking pizza.
Top image: Paul Galdone’s cover art for Space Cat by Ruthven Todd (1952)
This article was originally published in May 2017.
Corey J. White is a writer of science fiction, horror, and LIES. He really thinks the best space cat is Seven from his debut book, Killing Gravity, but obviously he’s biased. Its sequel, Void Black Shadow, publishes March 2018. Find him at coreyjwhite.com and on Twitter at @cjwhite.
Before the Kilrathi there were the Kzinti from Larry Niven’s Known Space.
Thank you, Bladrak. No Kzinti even as a mention is a total disgrace.
The very first thing I thought when I saw “Cats in space” was Kilrathi. I wondered if they would be mentioned. Nicely done :)
What about Nimitz from the Honor Harrington books?
What? You use a drawing of Ruthven’s “Space Cat” and don’t mention him and his family in the article? For shame! The Space Cat books were among my favorites as a kid. Unfortunately all out of print and, from what I’ve found so far, not digitized for eBook formats yet. Sigh. There are occasional copies of the dead tree versions available, but I’ve yet to find any that were not pretty darn expensive.
And there are also the S’Kitty stories by Mercedes Lackey, and I think Andre Norton had a few Space Cat stories too…
@5 Andre Norton had a novel titled “Catseye,” featuring telepathic Terran felines. Also in her “universe” were the Salariki, an alien race evolved from felines, as well as the evolved felines in “Breed to Come.” There was also the feline-alien hybrid Eet in the “Zero Stone” duology. I’m probably missing a few others.
Has no one else here seen Disney’s The Cat from Outer Space?
and yet you forget the Cat From Outer Space!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SEaSW1jtnQ
CJ Cherryh’s Chanur novels had the best dressed cats in space, bar none.
They swaggered. They wore earrings for each successful voyage. They wore weapons. They WERE weapons.
I loved that series!
Lady May and the rest of the cats from Cordwainer Smith’s The Game of Rat and Dragon.
Haviland Tuf’s Mushroom, Dax, Havoc, Chaos, Suspicion, Doubt, Hostility, Ingratitude and Foolishness (did I miss any?)
@9 Came here to bring them up too; hadn’t thought about being best dressed but you’re right, all formal pants with pearls! Additionally, one of the best examples of human-as-alien that I think you can find.
Cheshires from Monette and Bear’s Boojum-verse. Deaf-as-a-post, surreal and deadly.
David Weber’s Treecats.
Behold Streaky the SuperCat who just goes to show that Earth Cats>Kryptonian Dogs.
But really, the best Cats are SWATKATS. They have a stealth jet. That they build in a scrapyard.
Jim Butcher’s book The Aeronaughts Windlass has Rowl, the Warrior cat and his human Little Mouse. It’s not space exactly but they are flying.
CATALYST: A TALE OF THE BARQUE CATS, Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborouch. Book 1 of the series. Barque cats are bred to wander space ships to catch vermin and find air leaks.
#5: Pat, the Space Cat books may be unavailable right now, but the first book’s cover is available as a t-shirt from Out Of Print Clothing, who do book & literary themed t-shirts & such. For some reason, it’s part of their “Animal Lovers” category, rather than with the rest of the science fiction offerings. Came across the listing a few days ago, put in an order immediately.
(I noted in a comment the first time this article was posted that SPACE CAT was the very first book I remember reading, nearly sixty years ago. Special place in my heart for that book.)
I first thought of Roadkill from the Acorna series. Others of his kind are equally badass, but mostly less given to spacefaring.
I have always wanted to hear more about the race of space-fighting cats that were created to get Commander Suzdal out of a scrape in “The Crime and Glory of Commander Suzdal” by Cordwainer Smith.
I think Lying Cat is a unique and entertaining character in a comic full of great characters…
What about the cat in “The Cat Who Walks Through Walls” by Heinlein – I can’t remember the cats name, and he’s not central to the story line but is an interesting character
Cats are nice of course, and even more so in space.
But today A. Clarke would have had 100th birthday, perhaps we should remember him too.
The fact that a totally logical android would name a striped cat “Spot,” still makes me smile. Whichever person involved with ST:TNG is responsible for that is owed one big hug from me. That Data had a cat was yet more proof, if more was needed, that a cat can con anybeing into waiting on it hand and foot.
22, confirmed.
I have a friend who considered naming her striped cat Spot. But she and her housemates settled on Coffeepot, for the sound of the cat’s purr.
I was surprised to see feline humanoids instead of just plain cats, but since they’re here, I have to nominate the Rralans of Anne McCaffrey’s “Doona” series. “Decision at Doona”, in which humans and Rralans unknowingly decide to colonize the same planet – and peace is made because a hyperactive six-year-old boy bonds with a young Rralan, and goes around wearing a rope tail!
@18,
and the companion cats from the Game of Rats and Dragons, also by Smith.
Of course, one must not forget C’Mell
(Smith also had D’Joan, so he was not one of these anti-dog cat people)
20-his name is Pixel. He was in the last two Callahan books by Spider Robinson also.
Another fan of the Kzinti.
Also, there’s the size-shifting cat that is Sylvia on Pollux II in the original Star Trek episode ‘Catspaw’.
Better yet, though one could argue she wasn’t in space, and also wasn’t really a cat, is Isis, Gary Seven’s companion in ‘Assignment: Earth’.
@21, While reading, this post reminded me of Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “Who’s There?” which holds a special place in my heart as one of the first sci-fi stories I ever read. As well as featuring a cat on a space station!
Tigerishka and Miaow from The Wanderer
Mother Hittons Littul Kittons. (sic) Cordwainer Smith. Unforgettable.
The Haunted Space Suit aka Who’s There, by Arthur C. Clarke, published 1958, has SPOILER ALERT a mother cat having her kittens in aforesaid space suit. The cats don’t really appear as characters, though.
Biolith @31 I may be remembering this wrongly, but I think Mother Hittons Littul Kittons are ferrets or weasels rather than cats. They have kittens too.
I third the cat humanoids in Cherryh’s Chanur books and add Phyllis Gottlieb’s Starcat series as totally awesome cat humanoids.
This giant green cat that you can ride. Also the taking cat from Nevermore.
In a feature about the coolest cats in space, Cat from Red Dwarf only merits an honourable mention? Whaaat? He’s the epitome of cool!
(I’m not counting Terry Farrell or Hinton Battle though. I’m just not.)
@20
Heinlein was very fond of cats. Petronius the Arbiter (mostly called Pete) was a bigger character in The Door Into Summer than Pixel was in his books. Also the subject of one of the saddest lines in all of Sci-Fi near the last page…
@31, @33: Jazzlet is right. I don’t have the story to hand, but Wiki says they were mink. They were absolutely some kind of mustelid.
But as others have mentioned, Smith did give us C’mell and Suzdal’s feline space navy, so he’s done his share for cat awesomeness. “And NOW COME CATS!”
Cats in the Liaden universe are both intelligent and fey, able to move through matter and across space, and every ship and household needs one.
What, nobody else remembers Zelazny’s masterpiece Eye of Cat? My all-time favourite of his! The titular character is an telepathic shapeshifting alien predator called Cat, which certainly does have certain traits in common with its namesake species.
And there’s also the Coeurl — A. E. van Vogt, Black Destroyer. Black panthers with shoulder tentacles.
I’ll second Kate @39; I’m currently reading I Dare, and I love Merlin.
@40 Beth,
You are absolutely right. I have betrayed my classic-sci-fi cred by missing those two.
Does James Bond count as fantasy? If so, BLOFELD’S CAT!
We could do this for Heinlein’s cats only. Remember Martian flat cats from The Rolling Stones? Kind of proto-tribbles.
The great Meowara Tomokato spent much time in space; so he should be on the list. (Mark E. Rogers famous Samurai Cat for those too young to have encountered his glory.)
Don’t forget Andre Norton’s Star Ka’at series. Unfortunately it’s becoming relevant again…