Their nature as favored domestic pet tends to make us more acutely aware of their role in the food chain, and since we’ve already created rats, birds and fish, it also seems natural to explore what predator we’re most familiar with hunting these creatures. A cat is a pouncing carnivore of course. They’re also small, clocking in -3 SM in all instances I could find. They tend to prey on “rats” and “birds” and fish, if they can get them. They also tend to be excellent climbers. They’re also very cute and appealing as pets.
Space Rats in GURPS Space
Starting from the top, when it comes to Terrain, I think cats are traditionally either Plains or Desert, but I think you can make a case for Woodland too. They’re likely to be Walking perhaps with Climbing as a secondary (though swimming would be an interesting variation if it was going to really focus on catching those fish).
When it comes to Size, they’re technically human scale at SM -3. This makes them 9 HP and that gives them ST 4, which agrees with GURPS Basic and Allies, but not Pizard, who clocks them in at ST 5.
When it comes to their Body Plan, it’s hard to argue for something other than bilateral. They’ll want to focus everything they have towards their prey, and bilateral symmetry really benefits that. Classically, they’d have two limbs per side, a tail, an internal skeleton and no manipulators. Of course, fewer limbs could be possible (though would imply greater focus on their mouths or their tails for attack), as well as more limbs (though it’s not clear what the advantage of more limbs would offer). We could go with a variety of tails, but they would want to attack “forward” rather than behind, and there’s not much benefit to a prehensile tail, though heavier “dinosaurian” tail for balance could add more justifications for perfect balance or higher speed. It’s also plausible for them to have manipulators, and anyone with a cat know they’re not far off from it, having quite some agility with their claws. It’s hard, but not impossible, to justify an External Skeleton, but a “Combination” skeleton is as plausible, according to GURPS Space.
When it comes to Skin, cats obviously have fur, likely just normal fur with nothing special. They regulate their own temperature (warm-blooded) and they have continuous growth. Skin is possible, though Desert Cats would have Normal Skin with others would have “hide.” Desert Cats would have “Scales DR 1” if they went with scales; feather cats could justify normal feathers, and cats with an exoskeleton would have a Tough exosketon. When it comes to thermal regulation, Warm-Blooded has too many things going for it, both per space, and given their lifestyle: they need to be able to move quickly!
When it comes to Sex, normal cats have two sexes, live-bearing and a media strategy. As usual, Egg Laying is plausible, and we could justify more Strong K to offer justification for making our alien cats cute.
When it comes to Senses, alien cats should have at least Normal Vision, possibly telescopic vision, per their nature, but it’s not hard to justify weaker vision with we want. Their hearing would be normal. Their touch would be normal. Their taste/smell would be between Normal and Acute. Not a particularly amazing sensory package. They can also justify Nightvision; climbers could justify Perfect Balance
When it comes to Alien Minds, we probably expect xats to be “Low Intelligence” which is to say, no smarter than most animals. All their stats clock them as IQ 4, and that’s also plausible per space. We would expect Live Bearing Cats to average “Permanent Pair Bond” but “Temporary Pair Bond” is plausible. Unsurprisingly, they’re most likely to be Solitary.
This gives them a generic Psychological Profile of Chauvinism -1 (Broad-minded), Concentration +1 (Attentive), Curiosity 0, Egoism +1 (Proud), Empathy -1 (Oblivious), Gregariousness -2 (Loner (12)), Imagination +1 (Versatile) and Suspicion +0.
Generic Alien Cat Stats
We know what Alien Cats would look like; they’re cats with green fur rather than brown fur. Just use cat stats. I’m not going to reprint them here.
Variations
Chitin
An exoskeleton doesn’t really help a “cat” out. It provides some extra surfaces for sharp claws and teeth, but it doesn’t exactly increase their speed and it reduces their sensitivity to the air (though feelers could take the place of whispers) and, if were staying true to the themes of most bugs, reduces the sharpness of their vision. We could get around some of these issues, though: some insects have the ability to store up an astonishing amount of energy in their legs for a sudden jump. Rather than being fast a chitin cat could have a considerable jump. And we can fix the problems with compound eyes the way a spider does and just have more of them. Finally, we can replace the whiskers with fuzzy antennae
Lens (Chitin Cat): DX -2; IQ -1; Per -1; Move -4; Super-Jump 2; Vibration Sense (Air); if your stat set has flexibility, remove it.
Beach Cat
The primary prey of cats are, traditionally, birds, rats and fish. As a result, cats tend to be creatures of multiple worlds: their flexibility and their whiskers let them get into burrows to get at rats, and their excellent climbing lets them get at birds. But fish?
“Beach predators” are certainly a thing: creatures that excel at the boundary of water and land, like the crane, to take advantage of a fish’s inability to react well to things in the air, or the inability of things in the air to see what’s going on in the water. We could model a “cat” on the idea of a swift, agile hunter that can race into the water to snatch its prey and eat it on land, but that is also adept at hunting mice. It would likely need to give up its ability to catch birds in trees (but it can still take water fowl near the beach or river).
The biggest change is to replace the “Climbing” secondary with “Swimming.” The nature of our tail would change to facilitate us in the water (it can still be long and cat-like, but it should have some fins and some additional heft to help push the beach cat). When it comes to skin, fur is still completely plausible: they start to look more like otters. But if we want to give it a different covering to make it feel more alien, for skin they would probably have a fairly thick “hide” (DR 1), but a normal skin is plausible. For scales, likely normal scales (DR 1), though we might imagine it more like crocodilian scutes, though proper, scintillating fish-scales might be possible. “Breathing” actually becomes an issue: the most likely result is either Oxygen Storage or Gills, but I feel like with the model I’m envisioning, Oxygen Storage would be enough (though it should be noted that gills can actually help catch fish in water, by pulling the water quickly in through the gills to suck the fish closer). Warm-Blooded still remains the most plausible, which makes for an odd creature (and still has me leaning more towards fur or feathers rather than scales or amphibian skin). Egg-Laying becomes more probable (and makes more sense: they may be tied to the water for reproduction too, and may even have a metamorphosis cycle).
Senses change a bit. Their vision remains normal but colorblindness becomes more plausible according to Space, though I think excellent vision would help them pinpoint prey fish. Space suggests its aquatic nature might give it better hearing, but I’m not sold on it. Superior Touch is highly probable; we might expect them to have some sort of water-based vibration sense, though likely not on their face: perhaps their feet or their tail when dipped in the water gives them a sense of the movement of the fish so they can focus their hunt down to that spot. They may still have whiskers, though: they still hunt burrowing beach rats. Sense of smell is likely less important now, but wasn’t especially important to begin with. We’d drop Perfect Balance, but we could plausibly add Detect (Electric Fields) but I don’t especially see how it would profit them.
Nothing about their behavior or intelligence would change.
Lens (Beach Cat): Remove Perfect Balance and Fur; add Amphibious, Doesn’t Breath (Oxygen Storage) and Vibration Sense (Water).
The Sweetheart Cat
Cats are cute. But why? Well, they seem to retain a lot of neotenous traits mostly because we, as those who domesticated them, like them. But what if pitiableness was a fundamental trait? What would it take to make them clever and cute? Well, we can start at the end and work our way backwards. Such a creature would necessarily have a longer childhood, and profit most from a Strong-K strategy: they are cute to keep their parents happy and to allow them to develop longer. Higher intelligence would also profit from this (higher levels of playfulness). High sociability would make them more gregarious and empathic (though I’m not sure we actually want caring cats, so they might become Callous in addition to whatever levels of empathy they get; they are heartless hunters, after all), but I wouldn’t imagine more than a small group, because pouncers don’t get much profit from it. So likely we would just see some “small family groups” to raise their extra clever, extra needy children.
What does this change about the animal? Nothing. None of these changes require any physiological changes to justify, though if we want BIG CUTE EYES we might give them acute or telescopic vision.
Lens (Sweetheart Cat): Add +1 IQ, Acute Vision +2, and Congenial.
The Ball Cat
So what about alternate symmetries? Well, once again, we’re doing this for the sake of doing it, because radial or spherical symmetry offer nothing for a land-based predator.
For mobility, we’d need to roll or bounce, and I highly prefer bouncing here. The ball cat would need good eyes to spot their prey and then would want to keep those eyes on the target, so bouncing is more plausible. Two telescopic eyes would make more sense than a ring of eyes, to allow them to focus on their target, but then why are we doing a ball cat rather than a bilateral cat? Ah well. Fur and whiskers also make sense, so we can sense the air. Making it limbless fits the motif of the “ball cat” but then its mouth has to do all the work, and where would the mouth be? On the bottom, most likely, but we can’t do that if we bounce, so we must again privilege a direction, which means this is probably just a stupid bilateral cat, because we have essentially a limbless cat face bouncing around chomping on spherical rats. So this is more of an exercise in whimsy. Naturally, we cannot climb, so we lose our Perfect Balance, and we probably cannot be sexual here (how?!) which suggests asexual budding or some sort of spawning process (which suggests a close relationship with water, but that seems implausible). This tends to push us towards a Strong R strategy and reduced intelligence and a different psychological profile
The new profile would be Chauvinism -2 (Broad Minded), Concentration +1 (Attentive), Curiosity -1 (Staid), Egoism +0, Empathy -1 (Oblivious), Gregariousness -3 (Loner (9)), Imagination +0, Suspicion +0
Lens (Ball-Cat): IQ-1; Basic Move -5; add Super Jump 2 and Born Biter 1; Remove Perfect Balance and Sharp Claws; Replace Quadruped with Ovoid (Bounces);
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