Honestly obsessed with the “Humans are the cats of space” corner of the whole trope.
We may be seen as objectively adorable. We’re tiny predators, vicious and mighty with teeth and nails, but also easy to pick up and hold and swing around while saying “Babyyyy”
We’re quiet and sneaky in the wild, hard to catch and contain, very effective hunters and climbers. But when domesticated who wouldn’t just lounge around if we’re given free food, unlimited sleep, and constant enrichment?
And same with cats, there’s a variety of how humans act and feel about these huge creatures taking care of us. Some of us might be very chatty, very affectionate, some probably clingy if we trust our Alien enough. While others don’t screw with their personal space, would scratch and bite if you do something they don’t like. The affection is at their pace cause otherwise you’ll come out with a few scars.
As small as we are, the more wild independent humans have the strength and means to take down predators so much bigger than us when the situation becomes dire enough. There’s been cats who’ve gotten dogs, wolves, and bears singlehandedly.
A human that’s been in an alien family long enough would probably chase off a huge threatening space creature to protect the alien young, just as cats have done for human children.
Imagine after a few years of integration with aliens, some humans don’t get by well with taking care of their children so they find an alien that looks responsible and careful enough and they leave their young on their doorstep so they can grow up with all the food and shelter they could ever need.
Maybe they have a human distribution system where a person who’s just tired of the human world picks a ship to stay on, and the aliens on board just accept it because that’s how humans are. Maybe they help provide pest control for those space creatures small enough to hide in hard-to-reach areas of the ship.
And even amongst all this agility and predatory instinct, humans can still be pretty dumb and airhead and ridiculous. Imagine how hilarious aliens would find it when we get jumpscared or sneeze or feel the random need to stim and run around. Alien puts a long sticky parchment on that crevice of our backs that’s hard to reach and watches as we struggle to reach and take it off cause it’s annoying, same way we might put tape on a cat’s head. Maybe they find the funky way a human mom tries to carry her too-big baby funny the same way a mom cat dragging her too-big baby by the scruff is funny.
Maybe there’s a language barrier, but Aliens notice our odd human sounds and mimic them to get our attention, but they struggle with the different sound and pronunciation we just hear random gargled calls of “Molasses!” “Tree!” “税金!” when they’re just trying to greet us. And you learn to recognize the pattern of noises that mean whatever name they gave you in their language.
Humans really are just big cats.