I have to report a shaming oversight.

It was 61 years ago today, 18 October, that Félicette became the first (and so far only) astrocat. I am mortified to confess that  Belvedere and I failed utterly to celebrate her Diamond Anniversary last year. Oh woe.

Félicette was one of a bunch of Parisian strays rounded up by French scientists in order to test the effects of weightlessness etc on the mammalian body in space.  After rigorous training, which involved sitting in boxes and chilling out, Félicette was chosen from this space clowder to represent the feline contribution to space exploration. Apparently, all the others got too fat. Plus she was a tuxedo cat, and we know how very smart they are (see tuxedo-based posts for 28 January, 9 September and 29 November) 

On 18 October 1963, she was loaded into her capsule and fired into the void on top of a Veronique AGI rocket. It flew 157 km above Earth and Félicette experienced weightlessness, 9.5 gs and six times the speed of sound. She came down 15 minutes later, safe and unperturbed.    

Amazingly, given Schrödinger’s cat-based thinking some 30 years previously, not one rocket scientist asked himself if the cat was in the capsule or not. But then they didn’t wonder about her gender - they assumed she was male, and called her Felix. (Very unimaginative, as Belvedere points out)  On her return it was discovered that she was female,  so she was quickly remonikered Félicette.  Also amazingly,  it didn’t occur to them that maybe they had been originally correct, that maybe her time in space may have affected her hormones, and maybe she transitioned during the flight. For scientists, they seemed pretty unquestioning.

So, first cat is space! You’d think a Chevalier d’Honneur at least. Laika the poor soviet dog who perished is immortalised in bronze. Ham, the first cosmic chimpanzee, is interred with full honours in the Space Hall of Fame. 

Et Félicette? 

Rien.

Like Caroline Herschel, Rosalind Franklin, Jocelyn Bell, Burnell, Lise Meitner, etc, she was marginalised then forgotten.

Until 2017, when a campaign was launched to right this wrong and in December 2019, a bronze statue of Félicette was unveiled in the International Space University in Strasbourg, She also a has a wine named after her, a rather saucy little grenache bland from Pay’s d’Oc. 

Let’s raise a glass to Félicette, the first cat in space. 

See here for the story of the Félicette campaign

For more about smart felines. although none so adventurous as Félicette, see Ian Heath’s Clever Cats from Clowder Press,