Goose, the Captain Marvel Cat, Is Not Your Average Tabby Cat

There are few things more adorable in the Marvel Cinematic Universe than a cat. And so it’s no surprise that Goose, the feisty feline companion of Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), is a fan-favorite. But if you’ve seen the movie, you know that this is no ordinary tabby cat. It turns out that Goose is actually a Flerken—an alien creature that looks just like our earthly cats but has some majorly deadly differences.

In the movie, we see Goose swallowing the Tesseract and regurgitating it into Nick Fury’s office. He also flew with Carol Danvers aboard the Quadjet to Maria Rambeau’s house, accompanied her and Fury into the Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility, and even helped them escape from an explosion.

Jo Vaughan, an animal trainer who has worked on many films and TV shows, was tapped to help select the feline who would play Goose and then train it for the role. “I had a number of cats that looked like Goose, but we ended up with Tango and Nemo,” she tells PEOPLE.

Both cats are from the Animals for Hollywood talent agency. They were a bit older than most other movie-workers, but “they’re really easy to work with,” says Vaughan. They’re used to jumping and sitting on people, and they don’t get starstruck if their cues change. “We teach them long before they ever come to set how to jump and ride on someone’s shoulder, so they don’t have a lot of anxiety,” she adds.