There is no doubt, when looking at the appearance of Grudge, that this is a brown tabby Maine Coon, the American cat from the state of Maine on the East Coast of America. It is said that (and I agree) the best looking Maine Coons are the brown tabbies because they are the most natural looking. These are the sort of cats that came from the farms of the state of Maine and evolved through selective breeding to become pedigree cats at cat shows.
Grudge has quite a big following on social media. On October 20 her following was about 5,000. To add some detail, Grudge is in the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: DISCOVERY. In the video on this page the actor working with Grudge mentions that there are two cats. I’ve not seen the series but I presume that this is 2 cats playing the one part. I don’t know if both of them are Maine Coons. They probably are because they have to look alike for obvious reasons. To be clear, Grudge in the series is meant to be a female cat but the feline actors who play her part are both male. This begs the question as to whether you can tell female and male cats apart. I believe that you can and therefore the casting is not right 🙂 !
According to Michelle Paradise (Discovery co-showrunner), Grudge likes to be on set when they are filming. It is said that “Grudge is Book’s first lady love…”. Book has been played by David Ajala since about July 2019 when he joined the cast. The full name of the character is Cleveland “Book” Booker for the third season.
In the video you can listen to David Ajala describing his experiences working with Grudge. It seems to have worked out pretty well after Ajala got used to working with the cat. I’ll presume that he has worked with one cat so far and the second cat is in reserve should something go wrong. He did suffer a bit of a scratch and he says that Grudge tore his costume!
Grudge plays quite an important role in the series and apparently fans of Star Trek will be seeing her again. Grudge is based on a real-life pet cat. And that animal is the dog belonging to the grandmother of the executive producer of the show Jenny Lumet. That’s what my research tells me. Jenny Lumet said: “This cat was actually based on a dog, a Pekinese dog that lived in a sleeve of my grandmother Lena Horne’s kimono whose real name was Nellie. For years I just thought that it was dead because she never did anything.”
In the future we are told that Grudge will be “really, really unpleasant…And she makes things really miserable. So I’m excited about Grudge wreaking her havoc and behaving very badly in space a thousand years from now.”
