> Brazilian Army colonel Manuel dos Santos Lage planned to launch a cat named Flamengo aboard the Félix I rocket on 1 January 1959, but the flight was cancelled over ethical concerns regarding the use of a cat
Appropriate naming.
EDIT: Actually, this was probably deliberate mission naming, not the name of the actual rocket. Given the timing, it would presumably have been one of these or some relative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonda_(rocket)
If that's the statue the author is referring to with the phrase "a bronze statue of her was recently unveiled in Germany", I hope this didn't make it into the book, because Strasbourg was indeed part of Germany once, but is now French...
Presumably checking for damage. This was 1963, so about all that could be said of the safety of spaceflight, given that the USSR and US weren't really sharing data, was that Yuri Gagarin and John Glenn didn't immediately keel over dead.
Looks like they had a contingency plan[0]. I'd argue that the more-cruel action was euthanizing her when several other animals had already been dissected to see the impact of spaceflight on their bodies.
https://www.space.com/felicette-first-cat-in-space-statue-un...
More at wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Félicette
She had electrodes implanted inside her brain, received electric shocks to her muscles, and endured 9.5 Gs on ascent. :(
She survived, but was put down two months after the flight so that they could analyze her brain.