Embarrassing discovery: “grimalkin” is a real word which means cat, often a witch’s familiar. This means I have been missing a joke in Special Operations 2 for THIRTY YEARS. Paladin renames a captured freighter the Grimalkin for the titular special operation. I always assumed it was just a second Kilrathi name because the cats knew the Gamal Gan had been captured!
Additionally: I learned this not by noticing it in Shakespeare or Hawthorne but because ballroom_blitz got me PYEWACKET, an old children’s book about a gang of cats. We’ve been reading a bit before bed each night!
