Jones, usually called Jonesy, was the large yellow tom who served as ship's cat aboard the commercial tug USCSS Nostromo. He shared a hypersleep freezer with Ellen Ripley, walked the decks while the crew was awake, and was one of two living things to leave the ship after the Xenomorph killed the rest of the crew. Ripley carried him onto the Narcissus in a pressurized box, slept beside him for 57 years, and then left him on Gateway Station when she went back to LV-426.
Biography
Earlier Life
Alan Dean Foster's Alien novelization introduces Jones as an ordinary house cat doing a ship cat's work, a large yellow tom rather than a named breed. The book does not give him a birthplace, a previous ship, or an owner before the Nostromo. What it does show is the usual reason a freighter carried a cat on a long haul: vermin. Jones thought about food and warm, fat mice while he was supposed to be playing, and the crew kept a piece of string aboard for him. Aboard the ship, he served as both pest control and company for the crew.
He was not new to the freezers. When Dallas told someone to get the cat out of hypersleep, Ripley lifted a limp yellow body from one of the capsules, dried him in a towel, and objected when the captain treated him like equipment. She called Jones a member of the crew. Dallas answered that the cat was more of a crew member than some of the people, with Parker and Brett in mind. Jones put up with being carried. He had done this before, and he purred unsteadily while he licked himself back into order. On the bridge he walked around Ripley's ankles, then settled on a port console and watched the clouds as the tug went down toward the moon.
Life On The Ship
Alan Dean Foster's Alien novelization follows several beats from the cat's side of the room. While the ship waited on Kane, Lambert amused Jones on the bridge with the white string. The crew thought the string was there for the cat. Jones thought the opposite. From time to time it was his business to entertain the humans, who liked watching him poke and swat the cord in what he took for clumsy great paws. Lambert called the game cat's cradle. Jones called it people's cradle. He went on with the game because the navigator needed the smile, and because the humans were solemn. Under that, he was thinking about food and mice.
The same chapter puts Jones at the mess table after Kane woke, eating carefully from a dish in the center while Kane worked through a third helping. When the chestburster came through Kane's ribs, Jones left first. His tail bottled, his hair stood up, and he spat and cleared the table and the room in two jumps. Later, Dallas used the cat as the measure of the air shafts. The adult creature was using the same ducts Jones used, but Dallas did not believe it could shrink into a secondary vent only about a dozen centimeters across, a pipe that would barely admit anything larger than the cat.
First Encounter With The Alien
The motion tracker sent the crew after a contact that was only Jones. Ripley and Parker were ready to give up on an empty reading. Parker wanted to go back and help Brett catch the cat, and Ripley told him not to pick on Jones, who was as frightened as the rest of them. Brett followed the yowl into the cargo bay, calling "Jones" and "kitty" into the gaps between crates. For a moment he froze, because the cat was about the size of the thing that had burst out of Kane. A second meow settled him. He saw fur and whiskers and reached in. Jones hissed and backed farther into the corner.
The adult Xenomorph took Brett from above, a hand around his throat, and lifted him off the deck. Jones bolted underneath him and shot past Ripley and Parker as they ran in. By the time they reached the spot, Brett was gone into the shafts, and the thing they had been hunting at cat size had grown into something that filled the dark above the crates. Jones was not hurt. He had led Brett into the room where the creature was waiting, then got out from under it.
Escape With Ripley
After Ash was torn apart and the remaining air was down to less than twelve hours, Ripley stopped on the way to the shuttle and asked where Jones was. Parker had no interest in the cat and said he had always disliked him. She found Jones on Dallas's console on the bridge, washing himself and looking bored. He jumped down when she reached for him. She caught him by the scruff and pushed him into the pressurized traveling case while he braced his feet. She told him the others would not wait.
The self-destruct alarms forced her to leave the case in a companionway because he was meowing too loudly to carry through a search of the ship. She came back for him, dragged the box toward the Narcissus, and dumped him near the main console. Jones saw the Xenomorph's hand before she did and yowled. The creature lifted the sealed box, shook it, threw it, and hammered it into a gap between conduits while Jones hissed and fought inside. Ripley drew it back to the locker glass, then blew it out the rear hatch. When she opened the box, Jones forgot the attack as soon as it was over, the way cats do. He curled in her lap and purred while she recorded the log as warrant officer W5645022460H, last survivor of the Nostromo, and told him it was time to sleep.
In Cryosleep With Ripley
Jones slept in the same capsule as Ripley for the long drift. Foster's Aliens novelization opens on the two of them as dreamers in one tube, her sleep broken by the Nostromo and his left feral. Her own log, recorded before she closed the tube, expected the frontier in about four months if a beacon heard the shuttle. The haul ran much longer than that. About 37 years in, the Narcissus was pulled off course, and Jones woke with her.
A Detour To LV-178
In Alien: Out of the Shadows, Jones woke with Ripley over LV-178, where the Marion was dying after a mine outbreak. Jones climbed from Ripley's stomach to her chest as she came out of the tube, arched, and dug his claws into her skin. When she went back aboard the shuttle he was curled in the open pod. Chris Hooper took him for the oldest cat in the galaxy. He sniffed reconstituted chicken and walked away from it, then hid in one of the big EVA boots until she coaxed him out. Ripley locked him in the Narcissus with food while she went down into the mine. The shuttle was the one place on the Marion that was not full of the creatures.
He hissed at her when she came back, then let her pick him up. The shuttle was built for one person. Survivors who took turns in the pod would leave Jones awake for a haul he might not live through, so he got into the tube himself and settled in the covered lower section. When Hoop came back to launch, Jones was on the pilot's chair with his teeth bared, and he jumped clear of Hoop's hand. Ripley was unconscious. Hoop dressed her, and Jones purred at her side, then got in at her feet. Doctor Kasyanov wiped Ripley's memory of the Marion days before that sleep continued. Jones was asleep beside her again, and the wipe left her with no memory of him being awake.
Picked Up By Salvage Team
In 2179 a deep-salvage team found Jones asleep against Ripley under the glass. In Foster's Aliens novelization the boarders saw orange fur and claws tucked under her hair, and the hope of a second alien specimen ended when the shape was a cat. In Alien: River of Pain, Jernigan wiped the canopy and found that same cat hunkered beside her, the first cat he had seen since childhood. The bio lights were green for both of them.
In The Infirmary
On Gateway, Carter Burke brought Jones into the infirmary and talked the medics into leaving the cat on the bed with Ripley. Jones shed hair on the sterile sheet. When her chestburster nightmare hit in room 415, he leapt clear, yowled, and hissed at her from under a cabinet until she could tell him they were safe. Gateway did not allow pets. Burke said so on the way out of the atrium, and he called Jones a special privilege. Ripley scratched the tom behind the ears and answered that Jones was not a pet. He was a survivor. In the station's environmental unit he sprang at a robin on the forest solido, hit the wall, and staggered off while the bird went on hunting insects that were not there.
Life In Ripley's Apartment
Foster then puts them in a small apartment with almost nothing personal in it. Jones hunted the kitchen for scraps the room would not leave him, disliked strangers, and slept on the highboy once Ripley dropped off, clear of the nightmare he had learned was coming. Alien: River of Pain keeps that home on Gateway and makes the months plain. Ripley ran loaders and forklifts in the cargo docks, the only work she could get, and came back to a cabin where the days blurred into sleep, work, and the guilt over Amanda. The book did not give her a circle of friends on the station. Burke was the company man she disliked, and Lieutenant Gorman was a stranger in the doorway on 5 July 2179. Jones grumbled and got off the stool when they came in.
Final Fate
Jones lived with Ripley in the Gateway cabin through the weeks before the Sulaco. In River of Pain she worked the cargo docks and came back to him at the end of the day. She did not shut him in the apartment and leave him there for a month or more. On 5 July 2179 she told him he was staying, and Foster's Aliens leaves him in the apartment when she went. The haul to LV-426 was a few weeks in the freezer. Foster's Alien 3 novelization then stretches the return into a couple of years of cryosleep, with two years' travel still ahead. He had been a grown tom on the Nostromo. The fate left for him is that he presumably died of old age. At an Aliens screening in April 2016, while Neill Blomkamp's unmade sequel was under discussion, Sigourney Weaver said she thought Ripley had found Jones a home with someone on Gateway, and that the survivors in that film would have gone back for the cat.
Legacy And Later References
On LV-426, Ripley thinks of the apartment and of Jones as the safe place she left, and Foster treats her as the human Jones preferred when she is the one who has to move. Later books only bring him back as a memory. In the Alien: Isolation novel, Marlow tells Amanda Ripley that the creature killed most of the Nostromo crew and that the ones it did not get were her mother and the ship's cat. That is the novel's only mention. It does not follow Jones past the shuttle.
Pat Cadigan's novel of William Gibson's unused Alien 3 remembers the cat only in a public recap of Hadley's Hope. That account says Ripley came out of cold-sleep after forty-seven years, blamed a creature for the dead Nostromo crew, and blew up the ship after saving the ship's cat. The same pages then call her the cat-lady and send her out with the Marines.
Foster's Alien 3 novelization has Ripley think of Jonesy in the tunnels under Fury 161. She pairs them: curiosity and a talent for staying alive were what got both of them off the Nostromo. Then she treats him as gone, a victim of the time distortions that space travel forces on anyone left outside a freezer. She is the one left with the memories, and she expects no more nightmares for the cat.
The Alien Resurrection novelization gives the clone the same short list. Facing the Queen, she remembers Amy, then Newt, Hicks, and "Even Jonesy," all of them lost to the years. In Aliens: Original Sin, that clone stops herself from shooting a black dog in the dark and cannot leave it to the Xenomorphs, for the same reason the first Ripley could not leave Jones on the Nostromo while the self-destruct ran down.
Jones In Comics
Illustrated Story
Heavy Metal published Alien: The Illustrated Story in 1979, written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by Walt Simonson. Jones is in the escape the way he is in the film, in the carrier while Ripley runs for the shuttle. Simonson's extra beat is the creature itself. He drew Big Chap folded into a compact organic box in her path, a shape he had seen in a rough cut and was told would stay in the movie. The theatrical cut dropped that unfold and left a short corridor glimpse, so the box, and Jones beside it, survived in the graphic novel.
Nine Lives On The Nostromo
Jonesy: Nine Lives on the Nostromo is an illustrated book by Rory Lucey, published by Titan Books on 15 October 2018. The whole story is the cat's. He eats company cat food, chases rodents through the ship, and has his cryo nap cut short when the humans bring something aboard that is not house-trained. The tagline was "In space, no one can hear you meow." Lucey drew the film's rooms and props, including the drinking birds, and changed the Aspen beer cans to "Weyland Brew-Tani." The jokes are the stretches where Jones treats the crisis as someone else's problem.
Merchandise
NECA packed a seated orange Jones with its 7-inch Ellen Ripley in the Nostromo jumpsuit. The figure wears the blue-gray ship suit over a green shirt, with white sneakers, and the set includes a flamethrower, a second long gun, and the gray pet carrier with the Weyland-Yutani mark on the door. Jones is a separate small sculpt, not a part molded onto her arm, so he can stand beside the carrier the way he does in the escape.
No mass-market line has released Jones as a figure by himself. Funko Pop! Movies #733, Ripley Holding Jonesy, came out in 2019 for the Alien 40th anniversary as a Funko Shop exclusive, with the cat molded in her arms. Super7's 3.75-inch ReAction Ripley with Jonesy, from wave 3, packs a small cat on the card with her. The card follows an unreleased 1979 Alien blister. Weta Workshop's Mini Epics Ellen Ripley from Alien includes Jonesy and a flamethrower in one vinyl statue. Funko Pop! Deluxe #1936 puts a stalking Xenomorph and Jones on the same base.
Behind The Scenes
Four lookalike orange tabbies played Jones in Alien (1979). Different cats covered holding, hissing, and running, and the credits list the trainer as Animals Unlimited. The cats themselves are uncredited. On the DVD commentary, Ridley Scott said they got the hiss over Brett's shoulder by lifting a board with a leashed German Shepherd behind it. The cat reacted as soon as the dog was in view.
A different orange tabby played Jones in Aliens, and that cat was visibly larger than the four from Alien. That larger cat is the one in the Gateway scenes. Burke carried him into the infirmary, he hissed through Ripley's nightmare, and she fed him in the apartment before she left on the Sulaco. The Making of Aliens gives the nightmare hiss as a second cat placed close to him. The leashed German Shepherd is the first film's method, behind the board on Brett's scene.
An early James Cameron draft left the real cat dead in hypersleep. Burke told Ripley the animal could not be revived, then used a pocket control to freeze an orange tom in mid-lick. The company had ordered a synthetic copy so the news would be easier to take, and she threw Burke out. A later draft restored the cat from the Nostromo. Jones was that same animal, and the offer was that someone would look after him if she went to LV-426.
Similar Ship Cats
Rascal filled the same place on the USCSS Maginot in Alien: Earth, another yellow cat on a long Weyland-Yutani haul. Where Jones walked away from the Xenomorph because he was the wrong size to host one, Rascal did not get that luck. The eye parasite T. Ocellus took the cat's body after the ship failed, and that infected body came down to Earth with the Maginot's other specimens.
Conclusion
Jones was the large yellow tom who served as ship's cat on the Nostromo. He survived the outbreak with Ripley, shared the Narcissus hypersleep for 57 years, and lived with her in a Gateway cabin until she left for LV-426. She did not leave him locked in that apartment for a month or more. After she was gone, he presumably died of old age.
Appearances
- Alien (1979)
- Alien: The Illustrated Story (Heavy Metal, 1979)
- Aliens (1986)
- Alien novelization (Alan Dean Foster, 1979)
- Aliens novelization (Alan Dean Foster, 1986)
- Alien 3 novelization (Alan Dean Foster, 1992)
- Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay (Pat Cadigan, 2021)
- Alien Resurrection novelization (A. C. Crispin, 1997)
- Alien: Out of the Shadows (Tim Lebbon, 2014)
- Alien: Isolation novelization (Keith R. A. DeCandido, 2019)
- Alien: River of Pain (Christopher Golden, 2014)
- Aliens: Original Sin (Michael Jan Friedman, 2005)
- Jonesy: Nine Lives on the Nostromo (Rory Lucey, 2018)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Alien Lore | Xenomorph Encounter Survivors
