Shipscat Series by Mercedes Lackey

The Captain thought that their shipscat would be an asset at the trade negations, so he ordered Dick to bring her with them. Dick had warned her repeatedly not to hunt on this planet, but what cat ever does what a human tells her to?

Dick White, cat handler for the space ship Brightwing, knew that his shipscat was intelligent, but he hadn't expected her to come to the rescue when he and his shipmates were kidnapped.

When Dick White set out to discover the origins of the ship's new cat, he certainly never expected to find himself involved with the Drug Interdiction group of the Patrol.