They were on a new planet when a strange, furry, oddly docile, creature came up and began to rub against the human's legs. It was cat-like in appearance, though a deep bluish green, and had behaviors similar to earth felines as well. Though it was almost as large as a middle-sized canine, and had five toes on each paw. -- Anon Guest
If there is one law to working with Humans, it must be: Don't leave them unsupervised. You never know what they're going to pick up while they're out of sight.
Case in point, Human Jin, returning to the base ship with a sample crate in both hands and a native creature padding beside him at heel.
Companion Drusk knew she should have kept up with him. If only to stop whatever the hell had gone on to make Jin adopt a random creature while out scouting for interesting things. "What do you have there?" she asked.
"Sample case, doy," said Jin. Then laughed at their own joke. "No for serious, this little booger decided to follow me home. I didn't pet it or feed it, I swear. It just rubbed up against me and decided I was its best friend."
"I will be verifying via your personal monitor feed," warned Drusk.
"I know better than to lie to you," Jin dropped off the sample case for processing.
"So what is it?" prompted Drusk.
"Uh..." Jin looked down at the creature. Large as a Labrador, acting like a domestic cat, looking something like a binturong, but with weird, five-fingered chicken legs. "It is..." Jin fumbled. "It's green?"
"Har, har," Drusk deadpanned. She sighed as the creature ceased twining around Jin to rub up against her. It warbled a musical trill as it went.
"See? It likes us." Jin deliberately put his hands on his head to not pet the beast. "We can get it to the vivarium scanner, 'cause it'll literally follow us anywhere."
For a change, it was a relatively harmless, nonvenomous, nontoxic omnivore. Usually, Humans were wont to adopt hazardous predators and insist they were just babies who needed love. Even the things that could eat them. Especially the things that could eat them.
Obviously, the freshly-named Dragoncat was a statistical outlier and should not be counted.
[Photo by M Huzaifa Bhatti on Unsplash]
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And all the humans went nuts and it soon became a very popular pet prompting strict rules about breeding and care to avoid decimating the native population and ensure domesticated population didn't become invasive or abused.