A couple days ago I posted about the Russian dog sent into space.
But did you know a cat named Felix was sent into space by France?
According to Fur N purr:
In 1963 the French government had numerous cats undergoing intensive training for possible space flight, with fairly arduous tasks involving a compression chamber and a centrifuge. But they don't seem to have suffered too much; ten of the would-be astronauts were 'decommissioned' for eating too much!
1992 postage stamp issued by the Comoro Islands, from a set depicting space animals, including Felicette (probably) shown here Félix was one of those retained, and the one chosen to undertake the first mission. He was apparently a Paris street cat, although one report says he was bought by the French government from a dealer. However, it seems that Félix managed to escape, and was replaced at the last minute by a female cat, Félicette, so it was she who, on the prescribed date of 18 October 1963, was blasted off in a special capsule on top of a French Véronique AG1 rocket, from the Colomb Bacar rocket base at Hammaguir in the Algerian Sahara desert.
and then there is this:
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