Author: Majoki

Schrödinger’s cat gets all the hype. And for what? Being boxed up in an existential thought experiment? That’s nothing compared to being strapped in a slapdash rocket and flung into space in 1963. By the French of all people. Just so they could claim France was a player in the space race.

A Parisian alley cat in space. Me, Félicette, the first feline to break the bonds of Earth. My payoff? Fifteen minutes in suborbital flight, a few less-than-flattering photos in the papers, and then my skull being unceremoniously chopped open so my barely space-faring brain could be examined.

Well, what could a gutter cat like me really expect out of life? At least that life.

Ah, there’s the furry rub. Even a stray like me has nine lives. And that wasn’t something the French, or anyone, took into consideration before sending a cat into space. You see, even though I was up there for only fifteen minutes it was plenty of time for my other eight lives to slip into the ether.

My life on Earth may have ended, but now I was truly a space cat. Out in the magnetosphere, my eight un-destined lives stretched, flexed, and then clawed at all manner of charged particles. Solar and extra-solar. Known and unknown. Powerful and more powerful.

My many minds expanded and I, Félicette the Parisian stray, gained cosmic consciousness. And that’s how an astronomically far-off presence contacted me. They came from Alpha Leonis, better known as Regulus in the constellation of Leo. Naturally. Where else would advanced extra-intelligence that recognized feline sentience have originated?

I called them Leonistas. They called me an ally. From alley cat to interstellar ally, I provided intel on Earth. The Leonistas were curious and crafty, and I had no desire to end up as some alien Schrödinger’s cat, so I played it cagey.

When the Leonistas finally invaded and easily eliminated Earth’s top dogs, they got a nasty surprise. Humans. A species I’d personally never want to be in a cat fight with. Humans fight down and dirty and that’s what the Leonistas discovered.

All thanks to me, Félicette, a cat who told the Leonistas that Earth’s top dogs were literally dogs, not humans. My extra-terrestrial pals ridded the planet of all those intolerable canines. And once the Leonistas and humans decimated each other, my feline kind would inherit the Earth.

All very fitting since my name, Félicette, means “little happiness,” and isn’t that what even a Parisian alley cat deserves?