Spot


Spot was a female cat, and Data's pet in the 2360s and 2370s. She lived with him while he served aboard the  and -E. She had a litter of kittens with one of the other cats on the Enterprise-D. Data once wrote a poem about her, entitled "Ode to Spot". ()

History 
As a starship cat, Spot had never encountered rodents, insects or been chased by a canine. () Nevertheless, Spot was an active cat and received a lot of attention from Data, often playing with him and jumping on his desk for attention. () Spot also left Data's quarters to explore, though she could not trigger the doors. () Spot had tried 221 different formulas of food designed by Data, many of which she did not care for, but she did like his supplement 25. () Spot also was observed sleeping by Data, during which time she underwent muscle spasms. () Spot also appeared in Data's dreams. ()

Data unsuccessfully tried to train Spot, since she often tried to get attention when he was working. He used several methods including conditioned-response exercises, environmental enhancement, and bioconditioning devices, such as sensor nets for behavioral modification or biofeedback motivators. Upon noticing how readily Data would respond to Spot's requests for attention and playtime, Geordi La Forge joked that it was actually Spot who was successfully "training" Data. On another occasion, when Worf tried to give Spot commands, Spot did not respond to them. ()

Spot was a relatively fickle cat with people, and only seemed to get along well with Data, Dr. Crusher, Deanna Troi, and Reginald Barclay, which the latter found surprising. In 2369, while taking care of Spot, Commander Riker was forced to go to sickbay when she scratched his face. The next year, La Forge borrowed Spot, since he wanted to see what having a pet cat was like. They did not get along well, either. In 2370, Worf briefly took care of her, though he found himself allergic. He simply fed her. ()

In 2369, Spot was seen lying in the bridge's command chair during Data's dream sequence. ()

In 2370, Spot became pregnant by one of the twelve male cats aboard the Enterprise-D at that time. Data paid attention to her health, including bringing her to sickbay for a check-up just before giving birth. ()

Later on, Spot played an integral part in saving the Enterprise crew. While Data and Jean-Luc Picard were on an away mission, a synthetic T-cell became airborne and infected the crew and the animals. This caused inactive parts of their genetic code to activate and essentially "de-evolve" them, including Spot. She gave birth to her litter while also de-evolving into a reptile. When Data and Picard returned, they found her and saw that her kittens were unaffected. They realized that the natural defense mechanisms in the placenta, which protect infants from the mother's diseases while in the womb, might prove useful in creating an antidote. This led Data to develop a cure using amniotic fluid from Nurse Ogawa, who was also pregnant at the time. ()

In 2371, Spot survived the destruction of the Enterprise-D. Data, via his newly installed emotion chip, cried tears of joy over Spot's survival. Spot continued to live with Data until his death in 2379. Spot then met B-4 aboard the Enterprise-E. (; ; )

When Elnor was a boy on Vashti in the 2380s, Picard told him about Data and Spot. ()

Altan Inigo Soong, the son of Data's creator, later named an artificial cat "Spot II" in honor of Spot. ()

Appendices

Appearances

Background information 
According to the , Brent Spiner proposed the idea that Data should have a cat.

Spot first appeared in  as a male, long-haired Somali cat.  According to Richard Arnold, Spot was initially a male Abyssinian cat. The reason the cat's gender was inexplicably changed was, in reality, that Jeri Taylor decided Spot should have kittens. Also, the cat which first portrayed Spot died and was then replaced by a pair of other cats. () In subsequent appearances, Spot was seen as a more common American short-hair orange tabby, but still as a male. It was only in the seventh-season episode  that Spot was first referred to as "she". In , she even gave birth. The  jokingly suggests that Spot may be a shapeshifter or the victim of a transporter malfunction. Brent Spiner joked that there were actually 3,500 cats on the Enterprise-D and Data referred to all of them as "Spot". David Arnold suggested that Data perhaps got another cat and simply kept the name. ()

Spot was played by unknown long-haired Somali cats in her first two appearances and trained by Gary Gero and Scott Hart from Birds & Animals Unlimited. Spot's appearance was changed into an orange tabby cat beginning with the sixth season when Rob Bloch from Critters of the Cinema took over the animal casting and training. During her time on The Next Generation, Spot was then played by ,  and  and later also by , trained by Rob Bloch and Karen Thomas-Kolakowski.  Monster and Brandy were a pair of twin tabby cats and it was they who replaced the first cat to have played the role of Spot. () In "Genesis", when she turned into a lizard, the iguana portraying her was named Willie. 

In the first draft script of , Spot ended up on the holodeck while the holoprogram of the   was running, prompting Riker to call to Data, "Will you get your damn cat off the Holodeck!"

When it was decided that Spot would appear in Star Trek Generations, Critters of the Cinema trainers Bloch, Thomas-Kolakowski and Kelli Cole trained the cats Monster and Brandy and their back-ups  and Zoe. While Monster appeared in the scenes earlier in the film, when a more spunky Spot was required, Brandy was the cat seen at the end of the movie. Critters of the Cinema was not called back for the production of . 

A scene that was cut from Star Trek Nemesis revealed that Worf was left to care for Spot. In the scene, Worf and La Forge were cleaning out Data's quarters. Worf heard a noise, and looked up. Immediately after, Spot jumped into his arms. Worf stated that he "was not a cat person." La Forge then said, "You are now." This scene, along with other deleted scenes, was added as an extra on the film's .

While the character of Data loved Spot, Brent Spiner may have developed a minor dislike for the cat. In the commentary of , it was stated that he did not want to go back for Spot, and during an interview in the 2010 Wizard World in Philadelphia, he said, in a joking manner, that he thought the cat was "the stupidest actor I've ever worked with," saying that he "never took a piece of direction, ever," except for one time where "they" (presumably the writers) wrote in, "Spot eats tuna out of a can." Spiner added, "And he did it on the first take. Otherwise, we were there all day with that cat."

Spot is the second of six recurring pets; the others were Livingston, Chester, and Porthos, , and Grudge. Another pet on the Enterprise-D was , a Lycosa tarantula owned by Chief Miles O'Brien.

Apocrypha 
In the TNG short story "On The Spot" from the anthology The Sky's the Limit, following the  events depicted in the deleted scene where Spot jumps into his arms, Worf assumes the role of caretaker for Spot after Data's death. Worf, after Spot assists with hunting down an alien infestation on the Enterprise, states that he finds her to be a warrior, who simply lulls people into a false confidence as a cat.

External links 
 
 

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Cats
USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) personnel
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