The debate between cat people versus dog people has raged for a very long time on earth. A dog person will argue that dogs are superior due to their loyalty, utility, and ability to retrieve a beer from the fridge for you. If you were to drop dead a dog will sit vigilantly by your cold corpse until someone else comes along and recues it, or it starves itself. Dogs can learn how to be service animals for people with a variety of medical conditions. They can even learn to sniff out drugs, explosives, and people. The domesticated dog can also be obtained in a variety of sizes from the ultra yappy Pomeranians to the massively imposing newfoundland. Perhaps one of the biggest draws for dog people is that they are the master of their dog.

Cat people enjoy the relative hands off approach to being owned by a cat. Yes indeed you do not own a cat, the cat owns you. A cat will be quite happy to curl up in your lap and be scratched and petted. They will hunt rodents and insects for you. You can leave them to their own devices and they will be quite fine. Just as long as the food and water keep flowing. The moment you become useless to the cat, the cat is done with you. If you dropped dead the cat would wait less than a day before they start devouring you for sustenance and finding a way to escape.

Dave considered himself a cat person up until about ten seconds ago when he laid eyes on a lion sized Maine coon with bright yellow eyes hissing quite menacingly at him from about fifteen feet away. "Nice kitty.." Dave said, then quickly admonished himself for uttering such a useless phrase. This huge feline had been trapped in that crate for a couple of months and was clearly not very happy at the current moment. So Dave sat very still against the wall of the cargo pod where he landed after being struck by the door, maintaining a visual on the monster.

"Cam, we've been traveling out of system for awhile now, how is this cat alive in here?" he asked. Cam replied with, "Those livestock crates are supposed to keep the animal in a chemical stasis. It must have malfunctioned and the animal woke up". "Great", Dave thought. The big cat across the pod started slowly pacing back and forth looking up at all the walls and the opening to the access tunnel. It was clearly looking for a way to get the hell out of there. Dave would gladly allow it to do so had they not been currently in deep space.

Dave spoke up again, "So what the hell do we do now?". "All research of information through my earth database offers a few solutions. Do you have a spray bottle with water in it?" Cam said. Dave laughed incredulously. "Do you see this thing, Cam? You think a little water is going to deter this thing from ripping my throat open and eating my liver for a snack?" he said. He noticed then that the feline stopped looking around and began staring at him. Noticing this Dave's brain cells dug themselves out of the sludge of fear and began to actually do their job.

"If this cat has been in a medical stasis it's probably very hungry. Once delivered to it's destination the new owner would need to feed it." Dave thought as he glanced at the other four crates in the pod. "Cam, I'm not close enough to see the labels, can your cameras see what's in those other crates?" he asked. A moment passed before Cam replied, "I can, it appears to be a variety of food products meant for animals.". He knew what he had to do. He stood slowly and started gingerly stepping towards the crates while he stared at the cat and began speaking to it, "Hey, I would be pretty cranky if I woke up in a strange place with an empty stomach too. I'm going to check these crates here and see if we have something you can eat?"

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Dave notice the animal lift it's head up and it's ears shot up. "Can this cat understand me?" Dave thought in passing as he made his way closer to the crates. Cats were not unintelligent beings, just ran more by instinct after all. He reached the closest crate and accessed it's small touch panel. "Cam, this thing requires a passcode, can you help?" Dave asked. Cam did not respond but the lid on the crate next to him popped up a few inches. "Thank you." Dave said. Staring straight at the large feline Dave said, "I'm going to look inside this crate and see what we have. Please don't kill me when I turn my back."

Lifting the top of the crate off he turned away from big feline and started looking through the crate. He saw several large unmarked bags that felt like kibble, and quite a few large steak looking items in clear vacuum packs. Reaching down he grabbed one of the maybe steaks. It didn't feel like it was frozen, and it looked to be intact. He reached to the belt of his suit and grabbed a utility tool that included a small blade. He cut through the package and removed the slab of meat.

"Ok", He said as he started to turn around, "I think we may have.. ". Once fully turned around the feline was sitting less than twelve inches in front of him. Yellow eyes staring into the depths of his soul. It was sitting straight up in the perfect cat pose. Dave screamed in quite a high pitch and very loudly. He jerked backwards out of fear and fell backwards into the crate. As he fell he flung his arms out to try and stop his fall causing the unwrapped steak to fly across the pod. The cat did not pay any attention to the screaming, falling human and chose to instead snatch the steak out of mid air and retreat to the previous corner of the pod.

There he sat, folded nearly in half inside of a shipping crate, watching the biggest Maine coon he'd ever seen absolutely demolish a considerably sized steak within seconds. Once finished the cat walked back to the crate as Dave struggled to pull himself out. The awkward position combined with the added bulk of the pressure suit made his extrication a challenge. Before he could figure out the rest of his great crate escape a very large paw landed on his chest. He watched in fascinated horror as large claws unsheathed themselves from the paw and dug deep into the pressure suit.

"This is it, death by huge fucking cat.", he thought. With a swift twitch of muscle the cat lifted it's paw and pulled Dave from the crate. He noticed that the claws had not punctured any deeper than the pressure suit itself. The animal gently move him to the right with a single paw and set him down on the deck. Claws retracted and with no ado or fanfare whatsoever, the animal stuck it's head into the crate and began to rummage through the contents. Dave sat there staring. "Was it luck that the cargo pod was pressurized when the cat ripped into my suit? Did this animal just display clear signs of intelligence and decision making, or is it all just coincidence?" were just a few thoughts Dave had.

Since the animal was quite distracted rummaging through the crate of food Dave concluded that this would be the best opportunity to get himself back in the hauler. While evidence suggested the cat didn't want to use him as a play thing or a snack, he should probably still exit stage left. "Cam, I'm coming back to the hauler, do me a favor and unlock the rest of those crates for our new... friend here." He said. For all that had just happened, Dave was still very much a cat person and did not want this animal to starve.

Dave clamored into the connecting tunnel and completely ignored the hatch on the pod side. He came out into the hauler and turned around to close the hatch. Before he did he saw the cat lift it's head out of the crate and look at him. He must have been hallucinating due to high levels of adrenaline, but it look as if the cat bowed it's head to him before he closed the hatch. "Cam." he said. "Yes Dave" was the AI's response. Dave took a deep breath, knowing that there would be quite a few large ramifications for what he was about to say, "Turn us around and take us back home. I'm getting all kinds of poacher vibes out of this situation, and no amount of credits will make me complete this delivery."