I have to admit, I've always loved the way you did the Old School Caitians.

It's pretty much the way she looked in the animated series, just less spindly. She was quite skinny in the cartoon. Her hands and feet were especially small.

I know, the animation limitations were pretty severe, and I've seen a couple of documentaries on the making of the animated Star Trek back then.

Your model is flat-out better. Honestly she looks rather leonine, and the look suits her. Especially as a vore predator!

Some much better artists than I have drawn her. The furry community hasn't forgotten M'ress, and there's even a caitian (and a Kzinti!) on Lower Decks, albeit with some odd anatomical issues.

I know about T'Ana. My headcanon was that she never was a Caitian, but an Eeiauoan, from the old novel Uhura's Song. They were much more bobcat-like and had a very dry, fatalistic sense of humor. It came from when their planet was swept by a terrible plague that threatened to become a Federation-wide pandemic, before the Kirk and company (and an interesting guest) found a cure.

Eeiauo meant "exile." So a lot of them were ashamed of their background and hid it once they joined the Federation. But they were also pretty grateful to said Federation for helping save their people and their world, and joined up readily with Starfleet.

Sounds like a pretty good backstory for an Eeiauoan doctor, doesn't it?

I read that book back in the day. There was a bit in one of the novelizations of the animated series - they extended the episodes in the stories quite a lot in some cases - where Scotty had to dress as a caitian to approach M'ress, who was hiding in the Jeffries tubes. He said he got the idea because he went to a costume party dressed as a bird alien and there was a bird alien woman there dressed as a human. They almost got it on before they worked out what was happening. Something a bit like that happened in a Spellsinger short story too.

My thoughts on the oddly small kzinti in Lower Decks is he's a midget who joined Starfleet to get away from the bullying by his larger peers.

And less wall-eyed.

Given that those vents are realistic size as opposed to like-in-the-movies, he probably had no choice at that point.

Like when you're playing the Tron bikes game and your opponent boxes you in. It doesn't matter that going forward means doom -- you're going forward whether you like it or not.

We see an air vent in one episode (Obsession) and it’s quite small. In the story the security ensign was the only one small enough to squeeze through. M’ress just got lucky that the ensign chose to emerge into her quarters (and gullet).

"The air vent and a caitian’s digestive system should be easer to tell apart. To be fair, both are a series of tubes."

It's vexing, you have to travel through so many vents just to reach one cat. Someone should publish a diagram that-

They did? Oh. Good then.

Given the various branches it’s likely the ensign deliberately crawled to M’ress’s quarters so she’d get eaten. M’ress’s reaction to someone crawling down a narrow tunnel toward her was easy to predict. 83

I have to say that the concept of a person crawling through a vent, then unknowingly crawling down a pred's gullet is a great scenario! <3

It happened in a really old ”prison” strip on Eka's. I have always liked the idea and jsce done it in two stories now, plus a three page comic based on one of the stories.