The Cat From Outer Space (1978)

The Plot

An alien ship (a flying saucer; it's always a flying saucer) is forced to make an emergency landing on Earth. The U.S. Army arrives to investigate, with the General in charge convinced that a horrible bug-eyed alien monster might be loose. The ship's pilot, Zunar-J-5/Doric-4-7, sneaks on board an Army transport unnoticed, as he is not a big-eyed alien monster, but an Abyssinian cat.

The Army calls together a group of scientists to make sense of some of the technology they've found on the ship. None of the scientists know what the thing is, but one of them, Liz Barlett, suggests they call in Dr. Frank Wilson, who lives in her building. That's a not a glowing endorsement, but no one has a better idea, so they call Dr. Wilson.

Wilson states that he thinks the alien device taps into the "primal mainstream" for power, which makes the alien (lounging unnoticed nearby) start paying attention. Unfortunately, Wilson's flippant attitude doesn't sit well with the General, and he's off the project. The alien follows him and, assuming it's a normal cat, he names it Jake. "Jake" speaks to him, and tells Wilson the whole story, but decides to go by the name Jake when Wilson has trouble with his actual name.

Jake offers to give Wilson some high technology in exchange for Wilson helping Jake get home. However, along the way Jake uses his powers of telekinesis to help Link (another scientist living in the same building) win money betting on sports, and develops a crush on Liz's cat Lucybelle. (Unsurprisingly, this mirrors the attraction between Wilson and Liz.)

However, one of the people working on the Army base, Stallwood, is also a spy for criminal Mr. Olympus. Olympus finds out about Jake, and more importantly about Jake's collar, which gives anyone using it telekinetic powers, including the ability to fly. So, while Wilson and Jake are infiltrating the Army base to get Jake onto his ship so he can get home, Olympus and Stallwood kidnap Liz to get Wilson to hand over Jake and the collar.

Jake lets his ship leave without him so that he can help Liz (and Lucybelle). Olympus, Stallwood, and Liz are in a helicopter, so Jake uses his powers to fly a decrepit biplane so that he and Wilson can rescue them. Of course, the rescue succeeds. Liz and Wilson are a couple, as are Jake and Lucybelle. The criminals are caught and the Army is weirdly okay with everything.

The final scene is Jake being sworn in as a U.S. citizen.

Fitting it into the WW4C

This one's a doozy. First off, I'm happy that I decided earlier than animals in the WW4C can communicate intelligently with each other. Jake's attraction to Lucybelle if she were just an unintelligent cat would be disturbing.

Jake's collar grants some pretty impressive telekinetic powers, giving him enough power to fly a plane, and letting him move objects from an apparently unlimited distance as long as he can see them (he influences several sporting events he sees on TV). It also grants him the ability to speak via "thought projection," but this isn't telepathy, since it appears to actually broadcast his thoughts as sound, and he doesn't seem to have any ability to read minds.

The collar, as well as Jake's ship, appear to be powered by the "primal mainstream," which is apparently a wavelength found in all forms of energy, or a form of energy found in all wavelengths, or--well, it would take a scientist to explain it. I figure it's something like zero-point energy or a remnant of the creation of the universe before multiple types of energy split from each other. Regardless, it's a good source of power for high-tech devices.

Jake's race is also interesting. Jake is indistinguishable from an Earth cat, but states that he comes from another galaxy. It's possible this is parallel evolution, but it might also be the result of a common genetic ancestor seeding the universe. Without his collar, Jake is effectively an ordinary cat--he's still smart, but he can't speak and has no telekinetic powers. However, Jake says that the reason he's a cat is that his people developed mental powers and so developing thumbs and an upright posture wasn't necessary from an evolutionary standpoint. But if they need the collars to perform telekinesis, how did they make the collars? My thought is that, at one time, they were all telekinetic and able to use thought-projection. Or at least most of them, and the telekinetic ones invented the collars to give the same powers to the others. The availability of the collars, however, meant that being naturally telekinetic was no longer an evolutionary advantage, and so natural telekinesis is slowly becoming less common. I might be overthinking this.

Finally, there's the matter of Jake's legal status. Jake is a U.S. citizen, with all the attendant rights. Presumably, any kittens he has with Lucybelle are also U.S. citizens. However, the citizenship oath was delivered in what appeared to be a closed courtroom; there was no one else being granted citizenship there. Jake's citizenship, therefore, is probably a classified government secret in exchange for his services.