Beware the furballs of orange, for they are the most cunning. Oh who am I kidding? They're all sweethearts, just the orange furballs are usually the ones most apt to start mischief. -- BKF
[AN: Have you not heard of the mythical Orange Cat Braincell? All orange cats share one braincell. Who has it is a total mystery. Then again, they may start mischief because action and consequence refuse to be linked]
Earth's pets made it into Galactic Alliance space decades before the first Humans did. Dogs were the best known, as they could easily be modified for the task they were assigned to do. Cats, on the other hand, were mostly useful for one thing: small pest control.
There were problems to solve.
Cats are a fecund animal. One pregnant queen can turn a station into a cat-infested facility in the matter of a very few years. So the gengineers went to work on the "base model" to make the creature functional biotech.
First, the instincts and obligate carnivorism had to remain intact. Secondly, the reproductive excess had to be naturally restrained. Possibly by a means of social contact frequency. Third, the new model had to be visually distinct and easily identified as Station or Ship's maintenance. Fourth, the resulting creature had to work in concert with extant emergency systems. Fifth, they had to be allergen-free.
They couldn't do a thing about needing the litter tray. So they merely invented self-cleaning litter trays and incorporated them into extant systems.
The result was a creature that looked like a cat, but they were all uniformly orange. The same colour as anyone working for Station Maintenance.
What they missed was the key thing about orange cats. They are not merely as daft as a broom, they are as daft as a broom warehouse. They do not act like cunning creatures of the night. They have more zoomies per hour. They choose the oddest ways possible to eat and drink. They climb anything they can and then forget how to get down. They decide that one cogniscent is their cogniscent, and then purr like a maniac whenever they're near said being.
People working with the resulting felines are strongly advised to use thick, resilient clothes. Because the orange service cats show their pleasure by kneading the person they're sitting on.
They are, nevertheless, supremely effective at their job.
[Photo by Kym Ellis on Unsplash]
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