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Study 170 - The Game of Rat and Dragon (Patreon)

Published:
2026-06-19 13:54:51
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Humans mind-meld with cats to fight interstellar monsters in The Game of Rat and Dragon by Cordwainer Smith! Join us as we launch into MEOWterspace!

Special thanks to our magnificent reader: Ryan Negron!

Check out the story (with illustrations) in the original Galaxy Magazine from 1955!

And here's the article from Johns Hopkins magazine on the insane life of this author, who wrote the book on psychological warfare for the US government!

Comments

Rick Hound

This podcast has outweirded the moon beam traveling cats by introducing the idea of cats getting paw-sized gloves for fighting against inter dimensional creatures.

REO Jackwagon

I love love LOVED the central conceit of this story and now I have to read it. It feels like Star Trek plus 40K plus... I don't know - Furries? I don't know but I'm here for it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to write the wildest homebrew Spell Jammer campaign with special tables in case the Bard wants to emotionally seduce the cat, or vice versa.

Jim Cannon

The thing about cats vs. dogs or horses is that the latter have been domesticated way longer than the former. Something like 15K years for dogs, I think? Cats have only partnered with humans for maybe 5000 years. A third the length of time as dogs! Could be, in future times with space colonies and hyper travel and such, cats will be way more chill and more easy for humans to bond with and direct. I think we could afford bigger spaceships for them, though.

David Capune

My childhood pet cat also had a military (well, police) rank! His name was Sgt. Fred Jones after the warden of the jail he lived in for the majority of his life. When the human Sgt. Fred Jones retired the new warden did not want a cat living in the jail, so my uncle who was a psychiatrist at the jail asked my dad and I to take him in to live out his retirement with us. He was a very serious and grumpy fat orange cat who had no interest in toys or playing with you or much else besides napping in your lap. Still miss that old guy!

The Chet

Oh man, I read one of the Instrumentality stories, "Drunkboat," when I was a kid in some long-disintegrated collection of 60s era sci-fi. Mental clarity pain nets, psychic hospital warefare, mostly dead vs all dead, and a truly bizzare court of law section. Now that I know there are more I'll need to check them out.

Richard Horsman

I liked Smith’s writing here, but did get the ick from that ending. His wild (and sad) life though! That’s almost a more bizarre story than this one.

Stacey Cahan

The way the nurse saw Underhill reminded me very much of the way that Nurse Chapel views Spock in the Original Series, at least (SNW not withstanding). She sees him as desirable, but resents him for his failure to respond to her overtures. Perhaps the intent of the author was to show the way in which the pinsetters' minds would eventually hew towards more feline thought paths? That maybe when a person has a single, driving focus for too long, it has a detrimental effect on the rest of their lives? I don't even want to touch the rancid mentality of "I like when my girlfriend doesn't talk or demand anything of me." Besides, if the author had ever met my cat Majel (yes, named after the one you're thinking of, Chris), he would know that cats are often neither silent nor without demand (she's screaming at me right now demanding I watch her run on her wheel). Then again, maybe he was just trying to say "hey, animal crushes are totally normal and fine, and no one should ever say anything bad about why I kiss my cat on the lips."

Allison Albright

The cats get their own tiny spaceships??? This is the best story ever! Chris's "huh" at the end of the description of the character's crush on the cat took the word out of my mouth.

Stacy Schumacher

This story was very amusing. Two of the main thoughts I had were 1) maybe the author saw a cat take down a striking snake, as they do have reflexes fast enough to do that, as inspiration for the story. And 2) any author making a statement the connection with the cat has no demands clearly has never been a couple hours late with their wet food.

Jeremy Impson

Chris I'm so sorry for whatever experiences you've had with cats that have led you to conclude that *most cats* are standoffish and aloof.

The Lonely Sand Person

I understand why the scene with the nurse is there, but from a diagetic perspective she seems incredibly unprofessional to me. You've got a guy who just took the brunt of a psychic attack that came within a blink of destroying his mind, who just woke up from being unconscious for who knows how long, and you're upset that he's not being suave and socially graceful?

The Lonely Sand Person

Also, us grabby monkeys generally don't speak cat very well. Like how a cat relaxing within view but ignoring you isn't being standoffish, they're communicating that they trust you and are comfortable around you, and they're politely giving you your space.

Ben Gilbert

The Rediscovery of Man collects most of his short stories. He has a gift for naming his stories, like The Dead Lady of Clown Town, Mother Hitton's Littul Kittens, Think Blue Count Two, Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, The Ballad of Lost Smell, etc. This is one of the few anthologies where I read every story.

KateSherrod

Just me sitting here imagining Randolph Carter as the Pinlighter leader, and the Rats as kaiju moon-beasts, and Lady May chasing leaves after the fights, still in her dainty helmet and gloves...

MR ZEEL

Wow you really dug deep about this cat bond. You say that having a bond with a horse in fiction is unproblematic. The occurance that proves the rule to refer to here is EQUUS by Peter Shaffer. A play and film. Not a great bond/obsession. Also you mentioning Cordwainer Smith possibly being the subject of Brian Aldiss' reference. This reminds me of Horselover Fat in PKDick's last books.

Avlin Starfall

The idea of the navigating slip space that is filled with monsters that will either kill you or drive you insane really reminds me of 40k.

Joe Webb

Mother Hitton's is particularly memorable for me. Really dark, with a very original "weapon".

Kyle Griffiths

I love the instrumentality series (what I’ve read) and always thought they were more thoughtful about psychology than stories of a similar era. In Alpha Ralpha Blvd (anthologized in the Norton Book of Science Fiction), there’s a moment when the protagonist has a moment of cognitive dissonance due to failing replicator technology that made me think about our own psychological adaptability. I really like these stories.

Falconhoof

There's actually a strong tradition in many countries, of giving military ranks to animals. For instance the Royal Welsh battalion in the British Army have kept a goat as their mascot since the American War of Independence. These goats are given the rank of Lance Corporal and are handled by a junior officer called the 'Goat Major'. One of the most well-known goats was called William Windsor I. In 2006, during a parade to celebrate the Queens birthday, he went rogue and headbutted a drummer. He was later charged with "lack of decorum" and "disobeying a direct order". He had to appear before his commanding officer and was subsequently demoted to the rank of fusilier.

Markus Lauerer

I came across "Scanners Live in Vain" in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology collecting stories from the golden and silver ages of the genre and was blown away by how modern it felt. Most of the other stories read like quaint little relics of a bygone era but not this one, with its grimy, precarious depiction of a future society and its realistic exploration of an individual's psychological degradation. Really opened my eyes to what good sci-fi can accomplish.

Kyle Griffiths

Same :) that was my “hook” for this author.

It's a Ghost.

I wondered if Underhill's love/infatuation for the Partners, especially Lady May, was a sign of some kind of mental break. He hadn't gone entirely crazy, but I suspect it can't be good for your psyche to share such profound and deep connections with the cats under such stressful circumstances and then be dismissed by your fellow humans as you recuperate for months at a time in the hospital.

Sanjay Mathew

In the US Armed Forces, iirc, military dogs are given a courtesy rank one rank higher than their handler which might explain why cats get salutes.

Morgan Tudball

During this current heatwave in England, I am rereading Cool Air and am fantasising about frigid apartments and esoteric air conditioning.

Pete Williams

Something I found out recently is that house cats can take down snakes. A cat's reaction time is far faster than a snakes strike time. I love my cats but they are absolute murder machines.

Spectre Miniatures

I was really suprised to hear the obvious inspiration this story had on the Warhammer 40,000 universe, where ships enter 'The Warp' which is another dimension, filled with sanity devouring Daemons. They are guided through this by the 'light of the Emperor', which can only be seen by special ship bound telepaths. Theres me thinking they had acquired this lore from Dune!

Courtney Howard

I’m only ten minutes in but this is the perfect episode to get back into the podcast…while also being incredibly stoned. Sensational.

Matthew Hammons

For the first time, I can say that I've read one of these before you guys (also my first comment)! I was on a camping trip in Yellowstone when I read this one in one of those "greatest sci fi stories of all time" collections. I don't think the title of the book was true... On another note, a few months ago I was reading through Bradbury's The Illustrated Man, and the story "The Exiles" feels like it was made explicitly for y'all.

Runninghead

Sci-fi AND cats- at last! The most concerning part of this one for me wasn't the inter-species flirtiness, it was the idea of sealing your cat in a tiny pod that you have to cut them out of once they're safely back in from the void! 😱

Red Sauce

No matter how I look at it, I can't find a non-sexist interpretation of the narrator's approving description of his feline companion as "wordless." A man whose ideal woman never speaks is a man who either is or will abusive. That's not to shortchange this highly imaginative story and certainly not to accuse Smith of abusing anyone. Nor is it to claim that only men want silent partners (cf. Connie Francis's "Robot Man"). It's simply that a man desiring a silent woman carries a lot of historical baggage. Speaking of men with awful personalities and speculative fiction about psychic bonds with non-human creatures, would you ever consider doing an episode on Anne McCaffrey's "Weyr Search" as originally published in the October 1976 issue of Analog? In that story (and the subsequent series of novels), the *dragons* are the companion animals.

Our old pal Brendan Gardiner

On the topic of seeking credit, I was a little embarrassed just now at how readily I congratulated myself for making something happen in this episode. When Chad said that a particular cat was thinking mostly of cat sex and then laughed his way through a clarification that to the cat it was just sex, I thought of the “bird seed” vs. “seed” point I felt the need to make several episodes ago. Chad, you think of us as listeners. But you also listen. And grow.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

When I was in college, my family got a tuxedo cat named Colonel Fuzzbuttons. A few years later, he started a gay affair with my sister's cat Pretty Boy, perhaps a case of nominative determinism. Unfortunately their torrid affair involved spraying the house with their love, and my mother had to rehome them.

Andrew Trnacek

It’s possible that his feelings to his Partner is an expression of the insanity that afflicts the psychics. It could even be possible that just the bonding with the cats can cause what appears to be insanity even without the Dragons