Q595703

thumb|Kzinti on the cover of Man-Kzin Wars#The stories|Man-Kzin Wars III. The Kzinti (singular: Kzin) are an alien cat-like species developed by Larry Niven in his Known Space series.

The Kzinti were initially introduced in Niven's story "The Warriors" (originally in Worlds of If (1966), collected in Tales of Known Space (1975)) and "The Soft Weapon" (1967), collected in Neutron Star (1968). A Kzin character, Speaker-to-Animals (later known as Chmeee), subsequently played a significant role in Niven's Hugo and Nebula award-winning Ringworld (1970) and Ringworld Engineers (1980), giving considerably more background on the Kzinti and their interactions with human civilizations. Following Ringworld, Niven permitted several friends to write stories taking place in the time following "The Warriors" but before "The Soft Weapon"; These stories (including a handful by Niven) were collected in some volumes of The Man-Kzin Wars, which eventually reached fourteen volumes, the first published in June 1988. Kzinti also appears in Juggler of Worlds (2008) and Fate of Worlds (2012), novels within the Fleet of Worlds series (cowritten with Edward M. Lerner).