If you weren’t aware, I have animal magnetism. No, not the same kind Chad swears up an down he has as he does his sexy walk up to the starting line in his flip-flops. What I mean is that cats are drawn to me. (I said “cats”. Keep it PG, kids!) I’ve pulled about eight from within the fenders and engine bay of the Chrysler. I’ve found more randomly around my house, or at random in my travels. Haley and I have had three in our house long before we had the house to put them in. I understand cats: provide good food and fresh water, a sunbeam to bask in, a soft blanket to sleep on, and a place to relieve themselves and they will, sooner or later, show their appreciation. I’ve had trap-and-release ferals curl up and allow themselves to be pet. I’ve had people get pissed off because their cat from hell thinks I’m the second coming.

If you have had cats, you understand that they usually land on their feet. And it’s that self-righting behavior that scientists wanted to study in a zero-G environment at the dawn of space travel. With anything above the Kármán line (roughly 100 kilometers above surface level of Earth) a completely unknown area and with many speculations still needed to be converted to fact before manned missions became the normal, testing in new situations was required. Parabolic flights (what you normally see on NASA’s “Vomit Comet” rides) were a great way to get a lot of data in a little bit of time. Normally, you see a bunch of people in jumpsuits float around in a Boeing that has no interior. But well before that, it was a kitten in the cockpit of a fighter jet. The only shame in this documentary is that there should’ve been video of one very pissed-off cat floating towards the pilot, claws unsheathed, ready to assist a flyboy in gaining a Purple Heart while in the pursuit of advancing sciences.