Hestia

Hestia is a 1979 science fiction novel by American writer C. J. Cherryh. It is an early novel in her career, about colonists on an alien world and their interactions with the catlike natives, centering on a young engineer sent to solve the colonists' problems, and his relationship with the young native cat-woman in scanty clothing on the cover. Major themes in this novel are the perpetuation of conflicts through mistrust and revenge, personal responsibility, and conflicts between ethics and survival. Many other characters and the world itself are not developed with as much depth as those in some of Cherryh's other early works, such as Gate of Ivrel, The Pride of Chanur, Merchanter's Luck, and The Dreamstone. Notably, the alien cat-people in this novel are entirely different from the hani of the Chanur novels, being in temperament and culture somewhat more like housecats than lions.