Grudge - Cleveland Booker's cat - Star Trek: Discovery
"She's... a... queen!"
I said recently that Star Trek is like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but for everything, not just actors, and that the most unexpected things are related to Star Trek. Well, it turns out that Discovery writer and producer Jenny Lumet is the granddaughter of legendary jazz singer and civil rights activist Lena Horne. Why is this relevant? Because Grudge was inspired by a Pekingese who lived in the sleeve of Horne's kimono. The image of the old dame swanning around with a tiny dog in her sleeve is iconic.
A Pekingese is a very small dog, and a Maine Coon is a very large cat. The connection is obvious once you know. Lumet says that the Pekingese, Nelly "never did anything," which tracks. The theme emerging here is that animals contribute to the world-building of the show they are on, but I'm baffled as to what Grudge says about the world of Discovery (though I'm used to being baffled by Discovery.) But I think it's pretty awesome if Grudge is there for literally no reason. We love cats precisely because they serve no purpose.
Humans domesticated dogs, and cats just turned up one day and, announced they were living with humans, and that humans didn't get a say in it. Grudge strikes me as the sort of cat that adopted Booker, not the other way around.
Grudge has probably the most devoted pet daddy in all of Star Trek, I can't imagine even Data kicking a guy down a turbolift shaft for insulting Spot. And like Archer, Booker also caused an incident when he took his furry friend on a diplomatic mission, but if Archer was salty about the Kreetassans, at least he wasn't chased off the planet by guys with butterflies for faces (never change, Discovery.)