Frosty Outdoor Cats Finds Warmth In SpaceX’s Starlink Satellites

Cold kitties are cozying up to Elon Musk! More specifically, to the satellite dishes of his recently launched SpaceX internet service.

The frigid felines have been found snuggled inside the rooftop dishes across North America’s colder climbs as they have discovered that the dishes give off a modest amount of heat.

Customers of the broadband internet company Starlink by SpaceX have reported a very adorable issue with their home Starlink satellites — it makes an ideal crib for cuddling kitties.

It’s a troubling trend; the magazine Futurism reported — most recently indicated by one Canadian Starlink user on Twitter, who spotted no less than five cool cats chillin’ upon his dish. The problem is no one knows how many cats can take up residence before the bough could certainly break on this cat’s cradle.

“Starlink works great until the cats find out that the dish gives off a little heat on cold days,” wrote Aaron Taylor, from Alberta and Saskatchewan, on Jan. 31. The charmingly dystopian image of nearly half a dozen cats curled up on a snowy satellite has garnered 173,000 likes on the social media platform so far.

The phenomenon has appeared elsewhere, noted Futurism, including on Reddit where another customer on the r/Starlink subReddit raised the issue, in a discussion post that said simply, “Cats on Starlinks?”

One esteemed peer, an official Starlink Beta tester, provided a studied response.

“I was checking my dish with a thermal sight, and it actually looks like the whole dish, even the backside, is warm. So you might [find] animals under or around it in general if it’s ground-mounted.”

When activated, the dishes tilt at such an angle that animals, including birds and rodents, cannot nest in them, another pointed out — so there’s no inherent risk a critter could interrupt internet service in this way while the satellite is in use.

Not to be “catty,” but freezing felines are currently the least of tech billionaire Musk’s worries. Last week, the Chinese state officials called out the Tesla founder after one of SpaceX’s orbital satellites nearly collided with Beijing’s space station — twice, in July and October — and urged Musk to “act responsibly.”