Space Cats
A taxonomy.
Ever since the start of the year, I’ve been adding one tweet per week to a thread covering cats in sci-fi cover art.
It’s been a great way to dig deep into the very specific sub-subgenre, which is one of my favorites. Now that we’re exactly halfway through the year, I have an ask: Can you make a little noise about the thread? Retweet it, send it to your cat-obsessed friend.
Most of the art I post is a little too niche to go viral, but I think most people would like this thread! Plus it’s never too early to start a little stealth promo for my art book.
And if any of you have a Metafilter account, I’d love a post about it! The site featured my tumblr back in 2014 and I’ve been chasing that high ever since.
So what did I learn about Space Cats in the process of making this thread? I propose that Space Cats can be roughly divided into three different categories.
First, there’s the ship’s cat.
Just as we termed the “spaceship” after the nautical ship, we’ve transferred a lot of nautrical concepts into outer space, like the idea of a captain running things or words like stern and prow. The ship’s cat has been a thing for thousands of years, so cats also tend to crop up as spaceship pets, too. The most famous example is probably Alien’s Jonesy, but in retro sci-fi literature, my top pick is from Andre Norton’s 1968 novel The Zero Stone, where a ship’s cat eats a seed that mutates it into a host for an ancient telepathic alien named Eet.
Technically, Eet is far from a cat, but don’t tell the cover artists. Here’s Jeffrey Catherine Jones’ dynamic-yet-minimalist 1969 cover, a top-tier entry in Space Cat canon.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/06/https-3A-2F-2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F7a94459d-a2e5-44fc-a1b2-97bf704c9d1c_749x960.jpeg)
Bob Eggleton’s 2008 cover for the same series isn’t bad either. To my knowledge, these are the only two sci-fi covers to feature a kitty carrier.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/06/https-3A-2F-2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F5d34bc4c-e58a-46f3-8e4d-51cd96840930_668x881.jpeg)
Multiple ship’s cats made David Willson’s 1986 cover art to Tuf Voyaging, by George R. R. Martin.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/06/https-3A-2F-2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F88343ccb-0773-4788-b9d2-a67e5fdcac21_660x537.jpeg)
Danny Flynn’s 1986 cover to The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, by Robert A. Heinlein is another example: It’s a space habitat, not a spaceship, but same difference.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/06/https-3A-2F-2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2Fa2aa428a-b073-4dfd-b0cd-96e65b7261df_1115x1600.jpeg)
Ultimately, the ship’s cat category is pretty small next to the second category: Sentient, humanoid, bipedal aliens that are cat-like in appearance.
This one’s popular: Everyone likes cats, and every sci-fi alien race needs something to set it apart from humanity, so why not give them cat ears and a haughty attitude? Long-running franchises like Star Wars, Doctor Who, and Perry Rhodan each have more than one example of cat-like aliens.
Bruce Pennington did a lot of these. Here’s his 1971 cover to Anne McCaffrey’s Decision at Doona.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/06/https-3A-2F-2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2Fa655db82-7b74-41f4-b4df-700e49a28dd1_900x600.jpeg)
I’m a big fan of cat aliens with a fashion sense, and Wayne Barlowe delivered with this 1981 cover art to Andre Norton’s Breed to Come. I love how the cat’s staring enigmatically at the viewer, too, some real Mona Lisa vibes.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/06/https-3A-2F-2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F8f0c6663-21dd-4413-be54-e1d299037664_908x896.jpeg)
Finally, there’s the third category: Cat-like aliens that are the indigenous wildlife of a planet. They’re often big and scary, modelled after panthers or tigers. A classic example here from Frank Frazetta, illustrating Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Lost on Venus space opera:
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/06/https-3A-2F-2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2Fb6d96234-3957-434a-a88c-5a63ce521062_884x1200.jpeg)
They can be domesticated, too, like on this 1979 Mike Hinge cover for Masters of Everon by Gordon R. Dickson.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/06/https-3A-2F-2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2Fa4775ade-f0bd-4e52-9f7b-05c5716fab11_1280x554.jpeg)
You can even ride them, judging from this 1967 Frank Kelly Freas cover to Emil Petaja’s Lord of the Green Planet.
Fun fact: For this cover, Freas actually used a reference image of his own daughter riding the family cat, a 28-pound Siamese.
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/06/https-3A-2F-2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F5f86426b-55d8-4fa6-b3a1-3ae29ecb2dde_656x1024.jpeg)
The wildlife category of Space Cat can include some wild examples. Here’s Vicente Segrelles’ 1990 cover to the Italian magazine Urania’s translation of A E Van Vogt’s Monsters anthology. I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at, but I think it’s the very territorial ghost of a space cheetah.
If any of my subscribers have read this anthology and know which story the cover references, feel free to get in touch!
![](https://70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/content/images/2023/06/https-3A-2F-2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F6c98e309-e8a3-4297-8225-6d1823470b47_900x896.jpeg)
There are a few exceptions to these three general categories: Some artists just tossed cats into a collage or a surreal cover.
Feel free to comb through my space cat tag on tumblr for a look at all of them, including a lot of the entries I’ll be adding to my big thread across the rest of the year.
So, is there any big reason why so many sci-fi artists and authors settled on cats?
I don’t have hard evidence for this theory (aside from the Freas household), but I suspect the answer is simple: Sci-fi artists love cats just as much as everyone else, and don’t need much of an excuse to showcase a few of them floating through space in their kitty carriers.