In the Alien films, much is said about the human survivor of the
Nostromo, but what about the other?
As the ship's cat on the Weyland-Yutani ore refining vessel, Nostromo,
it seemed that Mister Jones - or "Jonesie" - had it good. Free reign
on a huge ship, able to come and go as he pleased, as long as he dealt
with any tag-along rodents and the enforced imprisonment in hypersleep.
Food, if not always on tap, was available, as the ancient naval tradition
of keeping the ship's cat well looked after had translated to the stars.
If only they listened to the marmalade tom as well as they kept him.
No one on the Nostromo realised what it was crewmember Kane
had attatched to his face after the exploration of the downed alien spacecraft
on LV-426. They knew it was a parasite of some kind, but the full
horror of it wasn't revealed until that fateful dinner of spaghetti...
Jonesie did. He kept well out of it, hiding down in the engineering
levels. As his presence was activating the motion sensors, causing
them to panic when it seemed there was no need, Brett went after
him, hoping to catch him in a cat box for the duration. Nope.
I wonder if he regretted his complaint of "stupid cat!" when he realised
Jones wasn't hissing at him, but at what was behind him...
It says something that of the two survivors of the Nostromo incident,
only one was human. Out of seven humans only Ellen Ripley survived,
but 100% of the cats got out! While that human admittedly had to
capture Jones to ensure he wasn't killed when the Nostromo was destroyed
(though he probably had every intention of ending up in the Narcissus
with her - he just wanted one last chance to prove to the human what she
was really made of, of course!), what is most important is he
managed to survive through the ducts with no equipment other than cat senses,
even though that was where the alien was!
Ripley was the only one who seemed to realise he could sense aliens before
they did (note the dream she had in Aliens where Jones realised
what was inside her just before it started to hatch), so maybe he was cutting
her a cat-type break by illustrating to her exactly what she was capable
of by making her come after him as well.
Maybe Alien3 wouldn't have had so bleak an ending if
she hadn't left him behind. I wonder if she ever regretted saying
the words-
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And you, you little
shithead - this time, you're staying here!
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