On October 18th 1963 France launched C 341 aka Félicette in to orbit; the first and, as of this writing, only cat in space

Consistently in third place during the 60s space race,  France was trying to keep up with the Soviet and American space programs. The French launched a rat into space in 1961, and began using larger mammals as a stepping stone to human space flight. They decided on using cats as they already had large amounts of neurological data on felines. C 341 was a stray Tuxedo cat on the streets of Paris, France when she was picked up along with 13 other cats, all female, by the Centre d’Enseignement et de Recherches de Médecine Aéronautique (CERMA) for the French space program. The cats were originally not given names so that researchers would not get too attached to them. Training began in early 1963 as the cats were implanted with permanent electrodes into their brains to test their neurological activity during the training and eventual space flight. The cats trained for about two months, undergoing some of the same training a human would in preparation for space flight. The cats were subject to G-force centrifuge and rocket noise testing, as well as cat specific such as the ability to handle confinement in their containers and withstanding the restraint cloth.

C 341 was chosen for the flight on the day of the launch. She was picked due to her calm demeanor and weight. She had nine electrodes implanted into her skull: two in the front sinus, one in the somatic area, two in the ventral hippocampal, two in the reticular area, and two in the association cortex. Two more electrodes were attached to her rear legs to monitor cardiac activity. Other electrodes were placed on one of her forelegs to so that electrical impluses could stimulate them during the flight. A pair of microphones, one on her chest and other on the rocket, were used to monitor her breathing. At 8:09 am on October 18th 1963 at the Centre interarmées d’essais d’engins spéciaux site in Hammaguir, Algeria C 341 was launched in space aboard a Véronique AGI 47 rocket. The suborbital  flight lasted 13 minutes and was across the board a success. Important, high quality, data was recorded during the space flight. C 341 experienced about 5 minutes of weightlessness during which her heart rate slowed and her breathing became and her heart rate rose heavily during the reentry, but otherwise she handled the flight almost perfectly. The media gave C 341 the name “Felix” after the cartoon Felix the Cat, but CERMA feminized it to “Félicette” and adopted it as her official name

Félicette… umm… spent the rest of her life as a hero of the Fifth Republic

In 2019 the International Space University in Strasbourg, France  unveiled a statue forever honoring Félicette the first cat in space!