LOGLINE: At an observatory on a distant planet, Penny the cat is accidently sent back in time to Earth in 1967 where she somehow disrupts the space-time continuum. Will has to follow her back into time to correct what she did to prevent the imminent destruction of the observatory. Along the way in 1967 Will meets his younger self and has to decide whether to correct things in his past as well.
TAGLINE: If we could change our past, should we?
The Cat Came Back is my time travel episode that allows me to revisit my own past since I was a teenager in 1967. My first draft had a completely different story. I wanted to bring back the two older hippies with their van who were seen in the episode "What the Cat Dragged In", only this time it was to be a small bit part as a gag to show them as their younger selves. When Katie Otten agreed to play one of the hippies, I couldn't let her considerable acting talent be wasted and I expanded her role and completely rewrote the script, which vastly changed the story for the better. The only parts I kept from the original draft was the observatory, TV shop, and race at the end. To transform the town of Lyons to look more like 1967, the old theater sign was restored and hung back up, and one building dressed as a 1967 TV shop. The title of the episode comes from the 1893 song, "The Cat Came Back", although those lyrics don't have anything to do with the episode's story. Later into production I thought that the melody with different lyrics might be nice to play over the end credits and I have original music performed for it. There are a few hidden Easter eggs clues to what the next episode is about, one is the Whiz comic book cover which shows a mirage town, and an article about a disappearing town on the bulletin board in the TV shop. Another clue is the small 1860 century German book "Germelshausen" on the counter of the TV shop which inspired my story for my next episode "Cataclysm". I had first read Germelshausen in high school German class and I thought that it was such an interesting story, and ever since then I wanted to adapt it as one of my movies. This episode also marks the debut of my new tuxedo cat, Nova, who plays a 1967 cat in the garage. Of possible interest to Lost in Space fans, the push button control panel that Dr. Tempus uses to set the time destination in the observatory is the same original prop panel that was used in the Lost in Space episode, The Time Merchant, by Dr. Chronos to set the time destination of his time portal.

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