That is M’Ress, a Catian, and the back up Comms officer among other roles.
Animation allows for aliens that aren’t just bumpy forehead humanoids.
T’Ana, the Chief Medical Officer in Lower Decks and, a minor recurring character in the first season of Prodigy (shown in my avatar) are also Caitian.
Strongly recommend seeing TAS at least once. There’s a lot of great stuff in there from the original TOS writers and cast.
A shout out to Trek Core’s great database of screencaps. This one is from their TAS BlueRay screencap library.
I read this in Data's voice.
"It appears that they are some sort of feline-humanoid hybrid creature, reminiscent of early 21st century Japanese animation."
Except not FFS. What did my Vulcan-Android ass just get done telling you?
She was voiced by Majet Barrett and the suits were so freaked out about how sexy she was to audiences in her first appearance that they had her appearance altered in later episodes.
There's a feline race in the Star Trek universe called the Caitians. Their appearance varies WIDELY depending on whether they're live-action or animated.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Caitian
