Why do we have cats AND Melmacians have cats?

September 21, 2012 6:08 PM

In any of the Alf media (the live action sitcom, the cartoon, or any supplementary materials), is it ever explained how cats have come to be on both Melmac and Earth? Here, it says that it is unknown if Melmac cats and Earth cats are even the same species (presumably they coud be doing a kind of Allosaurus/T-Rex convergent-evolution thing), but perhaps someone out there with greater Alf knowledge can shed more light on this.
posted by Greg Nog to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

There's a pretty good rundown on Melmac history here, but no real explanation as to how either cats or seafood appear there. Based on the way other lifeforms were similar but different, I guess you could assume that they were cats who were also lawyers, or some such thing.
posted by Rodrigo Lamaitre at 6:17 PM on September 21, 2012

It's pretty obvious if you look at it logically. Cats on a spaceship going that far would've been eaten, so they couldn't have come to earth from Melmac on a ship (or gone from earth to Melmac). Therefore it must be convergent evolution. I also suspect that the Alf media might not be 100% accurate when it comes to matters of taxonomy.
posted by the young rope-rider at 6:18 PM on September 21, 2012 [6 favorites]

Note that in addition to cats, lint, gravel, foam, ice, shellfish, yogurt, slugs, bronze, rust, carpet, grass, coal, silver, dirt, gold, bottlecaps, turnips, groundhogs, gas grills, halibut, pudding, clams, and green beans (which were given the right to vote in 1736) are all present on Melmac. So maybe something all these objects/creatures share allowed them to either survive the journey to Melmac or to develop concurrently on Melmac.
posted by sallybrown at 6:29 PM on September 21, 2012

The ancient Egyptians worshipped cats. Aliens built the pyramids. Melmacians eat cats. Coincidence?
posted by jozxyqk at 6:48 PM on September 21, 2012 [9 favorites]

Cats on a spaceship going that far would've been eaten, so they couldn't have come to earth from Melmac on a ship

Not necessarily, as jozxyqk points out. The Melmacians would not necessarily eat ALL of their food before arriving on Earth. They would presumably bring enough food for (a) at least short-term survival on Earth and (b) a return trip as well, if they were planning on going back home.
posted by puritycontrol at 9:32 PM on September 21, 2012

In fact, Anubis, the "jackal-headed" god, bears some resemblance to a certain Mr. Shumway, doesn't he? Hmm?
posted by jozxyqk at 1:30 PM on September 23, 2012