The creature comfort of a small, furry four-legged friend is one that astronauts aboard the International Space Station will likely not see during their spaceflights, the outpost’s crew explained Tuesday.

Students in Russia asked the station’s three-man Expedition 15 crew today whether it would be possible for a small kitten to liven up their orbital home. After all, cats can make any home cozier, explained the student, and as a fellow cat owner myself I am wont to agree.

But even if they wanted an orbital pet, the little beast would likely not enjoy a long spaceflight, the Expedition 15 crew said.

“It would be cozy to have a pet onboard the station,” cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, a Russian cosmonaut and Soyuz commander, replied. “But that would be impossible because it would be very difficult for them to adapt to the weightless environment.”

But, Kotov added, that the space station is not without its feline representative.

“We have such a kitten, which is actually a symbol of coziness of our home,” he said, speaking in Russian to students on Earth.

A little black and white stuffed kitten doll, dubbed Dimlar, launched into space aboard the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft that ferried Kotov, Expedition 15 commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and space tourist Charles Simonyi to the ISS last April. The doll’s moniker stemmed from a combination of the names of Kotov’s children, Dima and Lara.

You can see the doll hanging in the central left region of this camera view aboard the Soyuz. Watch it reach weightlessness in this launch video.

“My children, my family, presented it to me and it is a pleasure to have it onboard at this time,” said Kotov, who adopted the doll as his Soyuz mascot, hanging it on a string during liftoff to know exactly when his crew reached weightlessness.

Kotov is not the only astronaut with an affinity for pets and animals.

NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who spent seven months aboard the ISS between December 2006 and June 2007 as an Expedition 14 flight engineer, frequently mentioned her beloved dog Gorby and decorated the ISS with images of the pup.

Click here for a video about other animals that have actually made the flight into space.