I had long been interested in this particular species of alien
because of its resemblance to a certain domestic animal I had a
thing about. Unfortunately, the domestic animal was too small to
do much with without doing it serious injury and its larger
relatives were much too dangerous to fool around with.
The remote ancestors of the Ailourians had been an animal that
almost exactly resembled the Earthly domestic cat in external
appearance. The species had taken to the trees and become arbo-
real hunters, developing digited hands, opposable thumbs and a
prehensile tail to aid their pursuit of prey from branch to
branch. Later, when a drying of the climate caused their forest
habitat to shrink, they came down from the trees, increased in
size and evolved in intelligence just as we Earth humans had.