LOGLINE: A flashback reveals how Will's chance encounter with a cat enabled him to buy and fix up a salvageable, but haunted, spaceship, and started his adventures in space.
TAGLINE: The Dream Begins.
What The Cat Dragged In started filming in September 2019. The pandemic delayed completion and some pickup shots were filmed in April 2021. The guest star is Sue Booton who plays Lenore. Other actors include Dave and Bev Armstrong who play the older hippies, Rick Coen Jr. who plays Mr. Haney, the salvage yard owner, and Jamie Horter, the postal clerk. Jamie's part was originally going to be just a very small bit part where I hand her a notice and pick up my package at the post office but she started asking me what she should be doing at the counter and wanted to add to her character. When we rehearsed it she was so funny that I expanded that scene to where I have to keep coming back for more and more parcels. What The Cat Dragged In is my flashback episode to explain the origin of how Will acquired the Andromeda spacecraft. When writing it, my problem was how could I include Penny the cat in it, since in that timeline, they hadn't met yet, and yet she had to be in every episode since after all, the name of the series is Cosmic Cat. I decided that her being a mysterious space cat, who could travel through space time through the portal of mirrors, would allow Will to have a brief chance encounter before they later officially met in another flashback episode. I thought the title was appropriate since not only does What The Cat Dragged In refer to the old beat up spaceship that Will buys, drags home, and tries to fix up, but also Penny figuratively dragging Will into future adventures. If the cat hadn't coincidently shown up along the road and caused Will to chase him into the salvage yard, Will would have never discovered the spaceship that starts his space adventures. The character of Lenore resulted from wanting to use that name in a future episode as a reference to Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven in the episode, You Had Me At Meow. I always wanted to include a story arc to some of the episodes and writing many of them before I even started filming allowed me to create that arc. When I was laying out the series, I wanted the spaceship to have a tracked vehicle like the chariot on Lost in Space. Knowing that a full size one wouldn't fit through the studio doors forced me to consider alternatives, and this episode gave me an opportunity to introduce the space van in a fun way. There is also an arc involving the older hippies and their van which will show up in a future episode. The space pod is also introduced which will also show up in future episodes. There are "Easter Egg" clues to what the next episode was to be about hidden in this episode. They are are the obsolete Macintosh computer that Will almost throws away, the comic book, Thrill Comics: Race For the Moon-Adrift in Space, and parts of the Derelict spaceship in Haney's salvage yard. In the post office there's a wanted sign for Jesse Rem. Jesse Millspaugh is on the poster and does the voice of REM in the next episode.

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