Star Trek Turned 60 Yesterday. Data's Cat Was Played by at Least Six Different Cats, and Changed Sex Between Seasons.

Star Trek turned 60 yesterday. The original series premiered on September 8, 1966, and the franchise now runs to 11 television series, 14 films and more than 900 episodes. [1]

The anniversary was marked in an appropriately scattered way: a free screening of "The Man Trap" at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, a "Star Trek Lates" evening at London's Science Museum that included a Guinness World Records attempt for the most people performing the Vulcan salute at once, station takeovers at King's Cross St Pancras and South Kensington, a Gene Roddenberry star restoration on Hollywood Boulevard, and ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot wearing a Captain's Delta badge aboard the International Space Station. [2][3]

So here's the pet version of the anniversary — the animals of Star Trek, who played them, and the one thing their casting keeps demonstrating about real cats.

Spot was never one cat

Data's cat first appears in "Data's Day," in January 1991. In that episode Spot is a long-haired Somali, and Data refers to him as "he." [4]

By "A Fistful of Datas," two seasons later, Spot is a short-haired orange tabby — and is now "she." [4]

The reason is the kind of thing that only makes it into a production magazine. According to Star Trek: Communicator in February 1991, the first cat who played Spot passed away between seasons four and six. Producer Jeri Taylor then decided the character should become pregnant and give birth, which she does in the seventh-season episode "Genesis." [4]

"Genesis" is also the episode in which Spot briefly de-evolves into an iguana. The iguana was played by an actual iguana, named Willie. [4]

The named cats who played Spot across the run include the twin tabbies Monster and Brandy, then Bud, Tyler, Spencer and Zoe. Counting the original Somali, that's at least half a dozen animals in one role. [5]

Brent Spiner, who spent seven years acting opposite them, was not sentimental about it. He has called the cat "the stupidest actor I ever worked with," and told a convention audience that "when we would open a script and see Spot, our stomachs would turn over." [6] He was warmer about the cat he worked with later on Picard.

Spot got the tribute anyway. In the sixth-season episode "Schisms," Data performs "Ode to Spot," a poem that opens with the cat's Latin classification and closes by calling Spot "a true and valued friend." [7]

Why one cat is almost never one cat

The recasting isn't a Star Trek quirk. It's how cats get cast generally.

An animal-casting agency's own explanation is that cats can't switch temperament on cue the way a human actor can, so productions cast per behavior rather than training one animal across a range. The example they give is A Street Cat Named Bob, where seven cats played the title role: Oscar was very good at staying where he was told to stay, Booker was the fearless stunt cat, Leo was mellow and laid back, and Jaffa was the one who was good in the bicycle basket. [8]

The same logic shows up in a much more recent Star Trek. Book's Maine Coon, Grudge, on Discovery, is played by twin brothers — Leeu as primary and Durban as backup. Their owner described the split plainly: Leeu is much more outgoing at home, Durban is shy, and on set they play the perfect balance. [9]

Two cats. One character. Sorted by personality, not by training.

Porthos was three beagles, and one of them got dyed

Captain Archer's beagle on Enterprise was a similar arrangement, documented in a 2003 set-visit piece by the Star Trek journalist Larry Nemecek.

Prada was the original Porthos, debuting in the pilot "Broken Bow." Breezy, a three-year-old female, took over as the primary performer from late in the first season. Windy, age two, was the backup — she'd been tried out first and proved too nervous for the job. [10]

The production had auditioned other breeds, but a beagle fit the starship sets better than a larger dog. To keep continuity between Prada and Breezy, Breezy's nape was dyed with hypoallergenic human hair dye to match the original's markings. Her motivation ran to pineapple, cantaloupe and garlic chicken; for scenes where Porthos licks Archer's face, garlic chicken juice was smeared on Scott Bakula. [10]

Breezy appeared in 20 of Enterprise's first 51 episodes and travelled to Paramount by climate-controlled van. Her showcase was "A Night in Sickbay," which aired October 16, 2002, in which Porthos contracts an alien pathogen — she had to lie motionless, jump into Bakula's arms, and work without her trainer on set. A prosthetic beagle built by makeup designer Joel Harlow stood in for the submersion shots. [10][11]

Porthos, per Star Trek's own bio page, is named for one of Dumas' Three Musketeers, had littermates named for the other two, and loves only cheese. [12]

Number One was a rescue, and that was the point

When Picard premiered in 2020, Jean-Luc had a pit bull named Number One, played by a rescue dog named Dinero across two first-season episodes. [13]

That casting came from Patrick Stewart directly. "I am obsessed with pitbulls," he told Star Trek's own site. "What a dog, and how ill used they have been." He and his wife have fostered pit bulls through Wags and Walks, a Los Angeles rescue, and he has campaigned against the UK's breed-specific legislation. [13][14]

Stewart has form on this. Back on The Next Generation, he objected on ethical grounds to Livingston, the lionfish in Picard's ready room. As recalled by actor Robby Cox, Stewart's argument was: we're doing a series about the species of the universe, about the dignity of different species, and we have a captured species swimming around in the ready room? The tank was written out in "Chain of Command, Part I" in 1992, partly to accommodate him. [15]

The tribbles were 500 handmade balls of fake fur

"The Trouble with Tribbles" aired December 29, 1967, and was David Gerrold's first professional television work. Roughly 500 tribbles were sewn by Jacqueline Cumeré, who was paid $350 for the lot, from synthetic fur stuffed with foam rubber. Six "walking" tribbles used toy dog mechanisms; the breathing ones held surgical balloons. The shot of Kirk buried in tribbles took eight takes and used all 500. [16]

One of them is in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, donated in 1973. Microscopic analysis established that the hair is synthetic acrylic dyed brown, not cotton as the museum had originally catalogued it. [17]

What any of this is good for

The through-line in all of it — the six Spots, the three beagles, the two Maine Coons — is that a cat or dog on a set is worked around, not reprogrammed. Productions cast for the temperament the animal already has, keep the handler close, and keep the sessions short.

That maps onto something the veterinary literature says about cats at home. The AAFP and ISFM Feline Environmental Needs Guidelines put it in one line: "Predictability, familiarity and routine enhance the cat's coping ability." The same guidelines note that cats often don't show overt signs of stress, and that studies suggest even stoic cats can have elevated levels of catecholamines and other stress hormones. [18]

Which is worth remembering the next time your household changes shape — a move, a renovation, houseguests, a new baby, a second cat. The absence of visible complaint isn't proof that nothing landed. International Cat Care's version of the advice is to be predictable in your own behavior, keep daily routines, provide one of each key resource per cat plus one spare in separate locations, and let the cat start the interaction. [19]

For the record, the animal work on screen is supervised: American Humane has been monitoring animals on set since 1940, and the first official "No Animals Were Harmed" end credit appeared on The Doberman Gang in 1972. The program has drawn criticism over the years about certifications granted despite animal injuries, which is worth knowing alongside the credit. [20][21]

Sixty years, and the most reliably difficult cast members were the ones who never read a script.

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Sources

1. "Celebrating 60 Years of Star Trek Around the Globe." Paramount. https://www.paramount.com/news/celebrating-60-years-of-star-trek-around-the-globe
2. "Star Trek Boldly Goes into its 60th Year with Fan-Centric Anniversary Celebrations Throughout 2026." StarTrek.com. https://www.startrek.com/news/star-trek-60th-2026-fan-centric-celebrations
3. "Star Trek Boldly Celebrates 60 Years: Everything You Need To Know for September 8." StarTrek.com. https://www.startrek.com/news/star-trek-turns-60-worldwide-events
4. "What Only True Star Trek Fans Noticed About Data's Cat." Grunge. https://www.grunge.com/644878/what-only-true-star-trek-fans-noticed-about-datas-cat/
5. "Cats from Star Trek." Catster. https://www.catster.com/lifestyle/cats-from-star-trek/
6. "Star Trek's Brent Spiner on his most difficult co-star." SlashFilm. https://www.slashfilm.com/1527927/star-trek-brent-spiner-co-star-difficulty/
7. "Ode to Spot." StarTrek.com. https://www.startrek.com/news/ode-to-spot
8. "Why movies use more than one feline actor for each role: the many faces of A Street Cat Named Bob." Urban Paws Agency. https://urbanpawsagency.com/why-movies-use-more-than-one-feline-actor-for-each-role-the-many-faces-of-a-street-cat-named-bob/
9. "Star Trek: Discovery — 'That Hope Is You.'" Cinema Cats. https://cinemacats.com/star-trek-discovery-that-hope-is-you/
10. Nemecek, Larry. "Meet Breezy: Porthos." Set-visit feature, 2003. http://larrynemecek.com/articles/meet-breezy-porthos-2003.pdf
11. "A Night in Sickbay." Wikipedia (episode air date and production detail). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Night_in_Sickbay
12. "Porthos." StarTrek.com character bio. https://www.startrek.com/news/porthos-bio
13. "Sir Patrick Stewart on Why Number One Is the Best Good Boy." StarTrek.com. https://www.startrek.com/news/sir-patrick-stewart-on-why-number-one-is-the-best-good-boy
14. "Patrick Stewart and his rescue dogs." Adopt a Pet. https://www.adoptapet.com/blog/lifestyle/patrick-stewart-dog
15. "Why Patrick Stewart hated Picard's pet fish." SlashFilm. https://www.slashfilm.com/1658836/patrick-stewart-star-trek-jean-luc-picard-pet-fish-livingston-hate/
16. "The Trouble with Tribbles." Wikipedia (production detail, prop counts). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trouble_with_Tribbles
17. "Tribble, Small White, Star Trek TV Show Prop." Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, inv. A19850354000. https://airandspace.si.edu/es/collection-objects/tribble-small-white-star-trek-tv-show-prop/nasm_A19850354000
18. Ellis SLH, et al. "AAFP and ISFM Feline Environmental Needs Guidelines." Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery, 2013. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1098612X13477537
19. "Stress in cats." International Cat Care. https://icatcare.org/articles/stress-in-cats
20. "No Animals Were Harmed." American Humane. https://www.americanhumane.org/what-we-do/certify-humane-treatment/no-animals-were-harmed/
21. "American Humane Association awards accreditation to movies, TV shows despite animal injuries, deaths, report claims." Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/american-humane-association-awards-accreditation-to-movies-tv-shows-despite-animal-injuries-deaths-report-claims