When, at the end of Alien, Sigourney Weaver says, “This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off,” she’s not telling the whole truth. Because there’s another survivor, curled up with her in the hypersleep capsule. Jones (or Jonesey) the ginger tom.
Jones serves multiple functions within the Alien storyline:
1) CATGUFFIN, a pretext for characters to go wandering off on their own.
2) CATPANION, an excuse for Ripley to express herself out loud when she’s otherwise alone.
3) CATSHOCK, a cheap shock tactic in which the cat jumps out unexpectedly.
4) CATSCALLION, a wild card; at the end of the film, the cat might yet be harbouring an alien.
In short, one cannot overestimate the importance of Jones to Alien. This is his story.
STOP PRESS: the short story MY DAY BY JONES is now included in CATS ON FILM, the definitive work of feline film scholarship, available in paperback and digital formats from all the amazons (paperback + kindle), smashwords (kindle + epub + PDF) and CreateSpace (paperback).
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Best recap EVER.
Excellent.
Marvelous!!
They are going to give you an award of some sort for giant hairless killer-kitten. It may include rainbows. And harps and stuff.
This is fantastic!
You forgot the part where the hairless kitten kicks the cat basket.
This is truly inspired. You deserve some sort of prize! Well done!
Fun read. hehe 🙂
Brilliant!
Pretty decent, lovely idea, I liked the viewpoint of the cat calling humans "can-openers" could use a little more depth and stronger theme but overall fun little short fiction piece.
Brilliant. Awesome. One of my favorite movies, made completely fantastic. I laughed, and want more.
It's worth mentioning that the "Catscallion" option is impossible. The cat was neither exposed to the eggs nor live facehugger. The alien also did not have the appearance of a queen and so could not have laid an egg itself.
Great story. And very funny. Love the premise of telling the story from the cat's view.
http://www.dvdactive.com/images/reviews/screenshot/2012/1/alienbdcap3_original.jpg meow.
This is so funny, what a talent at writing you have 🙂 love the cat's eye view… everything is more interesting with cats, I think!
@234085hjf980You are correct in the eventual story they went with but the original plan, which I believe they actually filmed, was for Ripley to find eggs and cocooned crew mates before escaping.
Like the story – great idea.They did film an (unused) scene with cocooned crew members but I don't think there were any eggs. The Alien was just doing its thing presumably preparing the crew for a Queen that didn't actually exist.
here's the scene if anyone's curious. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS5MtzrW1vU
Enjoyed this immensely. Adding you to my blogroll of Friends. Keep on keeping on.
Is this still for sale? Would love to read it.
Hi Lorena, Thanks for your query. I’m currently putting together a book called Cats on Film, and My Day By Jones will be included in that. All the best.
I will be buying this book and hopefully there is a Kindle edition.
There certainly will be a Kindle! Thank you for your interest.