Challenge #02939-H016: Congratulations on Your New Cat

Well all know those pets. The ones that, no matter what you do, they cling to you like barnacles to a ship's hull. Cats, especially, can get like that when they get attached. In a station where they tend to send bad-luckers and people they deem "undesirable", a little ray of hope and comfort comes in the case of a ship. In the hold, several strays that had been using the hold as their hideout manage to wander on board. And now these bad-luckers find themselves with at least a dozen cats to care for. Except every single one of these cats could easily be nicknamed "Mr. / Ms. Clingy". Because these cats are absolutely insatiable for attention. -- Anon Guest

[AN: There's been some speculation about this prompt being related to this thing but bad-luckers end up in places where they can't cause harm. Transit Station Eighty-Six is where the UFTP store the chronic goldbricks. Completely different area]

Project Clover is a very special place. In recognising the Luck Gene, the Galactic Alliance had to find all those unfortunate individuals whose luck only ran one way - bad. It is a series of artificial Havenworlds where all comets and asteroids have been scoured from the solar system. The weather is balmy and pleasant. The plants are one hundred percent non-toxic. Everything there is soft. Every precaution has been taken to make sure the residents cannot come to life-threatening accidents. Even with the best of precautions, the planets held by Project Clover have the best ERTs[1] and infrastructure in Galactic space.

They certainly had some of the best Mediks. Just because the bad-luckers found themselves in the most interesting mishaps known to cogniscent life didn't mean they deserved it. The fact that they kept everything mostly-harmless didn't prevent bad luck. It just softened it to theoretically tolerable levels. Everything within a bad-lucker hostel world was purposely kept that way. At least until one rogue Deregger vessel tried to run what they thought was a trade embargo and push their merchandise on the residents.

A Deregger vessel that was infested with cats. Not the gene-controlled Skitties, but regular, everyday, Deathworlder domesticated felines. They crept out from the hold after the crash[2] and scurried away into the night. Long absent even as the ERT's came to run damage control. Cats know a good thing when they see it, and a Deregger vessel is definitely not that. By the time the Deregger was detained and the inherent chaos rounded up in the safety zone, many of the cats were untraceable.

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