In 1990 I wrote a planetarium show about a space cat. His name was Larry (after our own Lawrence E. Katt, who was with us from his birth in 1982 until his passing in 1999) and he had all kinds of adventures. Now we have three other cats (Pixel, Miranda, and Lazarus Long), and they’re all sort of astro cats in one way or another. Pixel is named after a Robert Heinlein cat character who plied the spaceways with Maureen Johnson Long. Miranda is so named because her mottled coloring reminded us of the Uranian moon Miranda.

And Laz (our newest addition) is named after another Robert Heinlein character who also plied the spaceways through a number of novels. What is it about cats and space? Would they do well on long voyages, in weightlessness? Would they travel well? I’ve always wondered about taking a cat on a cruise ship. Seems like a good companion to have on those days when all you want to do is slip into your cabin and relax…

Of course there are cats in astronomy. The constellations Leo Major and Leo Minor come to mind.

Aside from the constellations, cats show up in the cosmological tales of such civilizations as the Aztec, where their Jaguar God Tezcatlipoca rules the stars as god of the night sky and the winds of night. His name really means “smoking mirror”, which gives him a sort of magical aspect.

And of course, there is Bastet, the cat deity who was both goddess and protectress of cats and the people who lived with and cared for cats. While not exactly a deity associated with the stars, she was important in her own right — and I like to think of ancient Egyptians out stargazing with their cats by their sides!

So, how do cats figure in today’s stargazing? Hard to tell. Probably they don’t care much about what their humans are doing outside, as long as food regularly appears and the humans let them out to help during backyard stargazing sessions. I have a friend who used to brag that he kept a kitten in each pocket to keep his hands warm during long periods at the telescope. Our own cats don’t go outside (we live near a wooded area that is home to many critters that see cats as a tasty main dish), but they do like spend time indoors crawling around on the telescope base for my Dob and sleeping on the case for my 6″ Sovietski scope. But perhaps our cats are the exception. Maybe your cats go out stargazing with you ” and spend their evenings watching YOU scan through Leo or Lynx looking for excitement, adventure, and deep-sky objects! They’re great observers too — while you’re watching the universe, they’re watching YOU.