I also still enjoy all those elements of pop culture, particularly Star Trek, partially because of all the various cats in the various Treks over the years.

Not all felinoid races were as peaceful as the Caitians, such as this more warlike race of sentient, bipedal cats. Though they were originally introduced in Larry Niven’s non- Trek stories in the late 1960s, they’re best known outside of sci-fi book clubs from this single appearance in the animated Star Trek. Cat" was one of numerous words Miles O'Brien used due to his infection of the aphasia virus. ( DS9: " Babel") stand-in: James Doohan and male guest star (uncredited) / stand-in: William Shatner (uncredited) (50 episodes, 1967-1969) stunt double: DeForest Kelley (uncredited) / stunt double: Leonard Nimoy (uncredited) / stunts (uncredited) (3 episodes, 1966-1968)

They’re not in outer space space — they’re on a Convair C-131, and they didn’t go higher than 12,000 feet — but they’re real cats from 1947, and they’re floating in zero gravity! It was part of cruelty-free experiment in weightlessness by the U.S. Air Force’s Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories in 1947. (Here’s the full video, of which the cats are just a minute and a half.) In the alternate reality, nearly a year after stardate 2259.55, after the USS Enterprise was rechristened, Captain James T. Kirk asked Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott about the performance of the new warp core. "Purrin' like a kitten, captain " was Scott's response. ( Star Trek Into Darkness) model builder: Balok's ship and cube (uncredited) / model builder: Romulan Bird of Prey (uncredited) (2 episodes, 1966) stunt double: James Doohan (uncredited) / stunt double: Ned Romero (uncredited) / stunts (uncredited) (7 episodes, 1967-1968) Actually, this one is more of a shape-shifting alien cat who can occasionally turn into a woman, and then mostly does it to mess with people’s heads. (Wouldn’t your cat?)

The fearsomeness of the Kzinti in that episode is somewhat undone by their pink-and-purple uniforms, a result of director Hal Sutherland’s unfortunate color-blindness. stunt double: DeForest Kelley (uncredited) / stunt double: Tige Andrews (uncredited) (2 episodes, 1967) stunt double: Leonard Nimoy (uncredited) / stunt double: Robert Brown (uncredited) (3 episodes, 1967) Referring to the fact his initial impressions of Star Trek were formed by watching TOS, Archer actor Scott Bakula noted, " I'm an old cat." ( Star Trek Monthly issue 84, p. 23) The Human fourth grade student Gaby drew a cat in an environmental suit on her drawing " Vulcan" which was sent to Enterprise NX-01 in 2151. ( ENT: " Breaking the Ice")Not getting nearly as much screen time was the cat Chester, who appeared in only one episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but he’s worth mentioning because he was a rescue. It’s reassuring to know that even in the 24th century, people are still fighting the good fight. But Star Trek brought the focus to cats, where it belonged. Here are my favorites. 1. Sylvia, Star Trek, "Catspaw" Some animal training manuals claimed that cats, by nature, could not be trained. ( TNG: " Force of Nature") Unlike canines, they did not respond to verbal commands. ( TNG: " Force of Nature", " Phantasms") Upon describing how Jahn was to steal a bunch of communicators, the final draft script of TOS: " Miri" likewise repeatedly likened him to a cat; the script's stage directions stated that he "slips catlike" into a room where those devices were being kept, and had "a cat-eating-the- canary look on his face" as he made his getaway.

stunt double: Richard Tatro (uncredited) / stunt double: William Shatner (uncredited) (2 episodes, 1966-1967) titles and opticals: Anderson / titles & opticals: Van der Veer Photo Effects (64 episodes, 1966-1969) Because Star Trek wouldn’t have happened without the U.S. space program and all the hard work that led up to it, we can’t forget the real-life cats who paved the way: Weightless cats, Bioastronautics ResearchA couple of non- Star Trek cats from the fallow period between The Animated Series and The Next Generation bear mentioning. 5. Jake, The Cat From Outer Space The novel Survivors by Jean Lorrah includes a brief portrayal of Tasha's childhood, including her cat. In the anti-time future seen by Jean-Luc Picard, Data had amassed a diverse collection of cats while a professor at Cambridge University. ( TNG: " All Good Things...") Indeed, there weren’t a whole lot of cats in science fiction until Star Trek came long; there’d been more of a fascination with monkeys, in movies such as Forbidden Planet and especially Robinson Crusoe on Mars, in which "Mona, the Woolly Monkey" got third billing in the trailer. The animated Star Trek could do things that the not-animated Star Trek couldn’t, like have a crewmember who was a sentient, bipedal cat by the name of Lt. M’Ress. She was from the planet Cait, because ÔǪ well, of course she was, and she had a tendency to purr/ululate between sentences.