What’s the cat constellation? Lynx? Leo Major? Leo Minor? All three actually, giving the cat family some permanence among the stars. So, in honor of cats in space, I present the space cats here at thespacewriter.com in honor of Friday Cat Blogging!
Pixel, named for the Cat Who Walked Through Walls
I have this theory that cats will rule the spaceways someday. They seem made for space travel, as long as you make sure there’s enough cat food (and, of course, a sandbox) for their needs. Those are things I thought about when I wrote Larry Cat In Space (one of the most popular planetarium shows I’ve done 28-plus years of doing this). We got the cat some food for his journey, but sort of forgot about the sandbox. Next time we’ll do better!
Anyway, here’s to the Friday Cats!
Lazarus Long, "Laz" for short. Named for a famous Heinlein character.Miranda, named after a moon of Uranus
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).
