I just re-watched TNG “In Theory” (S04E25) and Data says that the door to his quarters is set to only allow humanoids to enter or leave when Geordie finds Spot in the hall.
Whilst I get that it would be dangerous for Spot to wander the ship freely I think it’s kind of mean to keep him locked in a small room like that forever. There doesn’t seem to be any cat toys in the room but maybe the computer is capable of some sort of environmental enrichment we can’t immediately see.
Do you have a cat? There would be several episodes about Spot breaking various ship systems and causing cat-astrophes
Your summary feels like an episode of Lower Decks demanding to be written!
seems like data would just pin a communicator to his collar and beam him back if he got the urge to go walkabout.
Not really. His quarters seem spacious enough and as long as he has plenty of engagement - which we can assume he did because of his study of having a pet, indoor cats are perfectly happy lazy balls of frustrating love.
I mean, there are trucker cats who are happy.
Plus, cats are nocturnal and are most active at night. Data does not always sleep, so on nights where he’s not on the bridge, he could be spending quality time with Spot.
Cats are actually crepuscular, meaning they’re most active at dawn and dusk, but they can be trained to keep to a mostly human sleep schedule (by which I mean sleeping 8 of their 15 daily hours at the same time you do).
That program? An almost completely empty holodeck, with a single cardboard box in a corner.
Totally. I started thinking that as I was posting. Or you could have like a motorised laser pen. Thinking about it, you could easily hide something like that in the walls of the TNG style starship quarters.
I have an introvert cat that would think I was torturing her if I were to make her leave her little spaces.
My cat was the opposite. He longed for adventure! Excitement! The great outdoors.
I’d take him on walks on a little cat harness. He was perfectly happy to roam. I think we got 4 blocks away one time before I finally had to say “Look, cat, it’s getting late. Time to go home again.”
He was a very good cat.
It seems like the upper staff on the ship get quarters that are roughly the size of a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment. Not great, but not worse than what lots of people do IRL.
Plus maybe he sometimes takes spot to a cargohold for more active play. There would be plenty of space, lots of height, etc. And that’s all before even considering the holodeck.
