Nicholas Cage Cats

MOMMY! I'm scared!

Actually this is not Nicolas Cage's mug grafted to a picture of a cat, although I guess there is a passing resemblance.

This name, or more accurately the _title_ of the being in this photo is 'Speaker to Animals'*, who is an expert translator of human dialects into his native tongue and an expert in human relations.

*'Speaker to Animals' is a job title - there is one on every mothership, and there are many, many, motherships.

Very creative, cdh! Enjoyed reading your imaginative musings! Yes, the Speaker to Animals is a shaman who can morph into the form of animals and tune into their thinking and communicate with them mentally. Mr. Cage's special calling revealed itself the day he took mushrooms with his cat and experienced the oneness of all life forms.

Thanks for the complement Grace, but, alas, although I have a good imagination, my reference to 'Speaker to Animals' refers to a species of human-like (kinda sorta) and warlike feliform aliens, the 'Kzin' from Larry Niven's Ringworld Universe.

In Niven's Ringworld series, Earth Tribe is related to the Kzin on a genetic basis due to Earth, Kzin and other planets being nutritional yeast farms for an ancient and now more or less billion-year-extinct galactic empire... humankind,kzin et al are descended from the yeast...

It's a great series, here's the WikiP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Known_space

My original, accidentally evaporated comment referenced David Brin's Uplift Series, in which galactic civilization has maintained order for aeons by uplifting pre-sentient beings to sentience.

The definition of a sentient species by Brin's galactic civilization is one that has uplifted another to sentience.

By dumb luck, 22nd century humans have uplifted several species at the point of First Contact and were reluctantly deemed sentient by Galactic Civilization.

The series notes that 21st century humans would be deemed non-sentient, punished for environmental damage to the planet, then adopted out to some worthy galactic species. Here is a WikiP link to Brin's Uplift series..well worth a look:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplift_Universe

But my computer ate the comment and restarted, so I made the Kzin comment.

Cheers!

Cool! Thanks so much cdh! It's been eons since I read science fiction, which I read all through high school and my early 20's. There's so much to read and learn about real life nature, science, philosophy, history, psychology, etc., these days that sci fi seemed like a luxury I didn't have time for any more - tho sci fi ideas in the past actually planted the seeds for a lot of things that have now come into existence! It has been fascinating to watch! What is ahead? Maybe reading sci fi again would give me a peek of some possibilities! Perhaps I'll start by checking these two out. They sound very interesting. Thanks again! Grace