What’s a cat got to do with space? If you’re a cat lover, you know that cats have everything to do with everything! We’ve had a number of cats make their home with us over the years. The first was Calicat, who was dumped on our doorstep during a particularly bad blizzard in Denver. She lived for 16 years, produced one litter of kittens, and generally presided over all the doings at our house with great aplomb.

When we moved to Massachusetts, we brought her son Larry with us (Calicat had died just before that), and he was with us for almost 18 years. Larry is something of a fixture in planetarium circles, being the star of a show I wrote to teach kids about the Moon, called Larry Cat in Space.

We have other cats, as well. Like Larry, and Calicat before him, they’ve all become our “space cats,” living with our crazy hours, our productions (which often include creating the universe, detonating supernova explosions in our soundtracks, and all the other things that go along with talking about cool stuff in space). Most of the time they just sleep through it all.

Laz is my current companion as I write this. He is spending some time this morning staring out the window at the rain (coming down in buckets) and no doubt wondering what happened to the birds that used to hang around outside the window. We got Laz a couple of years ago when he was just a kitten. He’s a bit bigger now, but still likes to be around as I write. In fact, I like to think of him as my “cat’s-eye” companion. Here’s a little Photoshop(tm) thing I did with one of his pictures (I’m always taking pictures of him), giving him the appropriate “starry-eyed” look (for a cat).