Scifi book read in early 90s - Man that has a genetically modified cat that can adapt to any environment

[Chocobits]

What I can remember, the man has a cat that was mentioned more than once to be able to adapt to any environment. The man travels to many different worlds. One world, they need to travel underwater, and the cat grows gills and webbed feet to follow him.

On his travels he meets some friends. They encounter alien creatures blocking their way and found that melodic singing pacified them and allowed them to pass. At some point the man is separated from his friends, who encounter the same group of creatures a second time. They decide that the best way to get around them is to purposefully sing badly to hurt the creatures and make them go away. When the man travels back this way, he encounters the same creatures and begins to try to sing to them to pacify them, but they were soured to the whole singing thing from their last encounter, hiss at him and back away.

At one point the man needs to activate a machine used by aliens with impossibly tiny fingers. He figures out that by forcing his cat to extend its claws, he can push the button with them. I was fascinated by this passage because I didn't know you could make a cat unsheath their claws by gently pressing them.

 

[tachyon]

There's a cat like this in Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams but I'm not sure the other details match.

 

[Chocobits]

There's a cat like this in Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams but I'm not sure the other details match.

Unfortunately it can't be that; the release date (2008) is 16+ years too recent.

 

[tachyon]

Came across Tuf Voyaging by George RR Martin and it's chock full of genetically engineered cats - can't speak to the other plot points you mention.

 

[hitmouse]

Came across Tuf Voyaging by George RR Martin and it's chock full of genetically engineered cats - can't speak to the other plot points you mention.

Great book, but that isn’t it.

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

Robert Heinlein, springs to mind 1980s.

 

[PaulMmn]

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1985. Like many of his later novels, it features Lazarus Long and Jubal Harshaw as supporting characters.

 

[Chocobits]

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is a science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1985. Like many of his later novels, it features Lazarus Long and Jubal Harshaw as supporting characters.

Heinlein also sprung to mind but the cat wasn't Lazarus Long. I browsed through some of the books featuring Lazarus Long and searched for the term "sing" and "gills" and got no hits. It's possible I'm transposing the elements of two different novels - a novel featuring a group of space faring adventurers encountering an alien race that could only be pacified by song, but are hurt by off-key singing, and a novel mentioning a cat that could change its physical attributes to breathe underwater and whose claw was needed to press a very tiny button made by an alien race with very tiny fingers, but I could swear they were the same story.