Sure maybe Data went through a few Spots, but also maybe Spot got his/her atoms rearranged by any one of the dozens of space/time anomalies or capricious demigods the Enterprise encountered over the years.
Ever since the 22nd century, vanilla cats were going out of fashion, to be replaced by chameleon cats.
I liked the extra fuzzy one from "In Theory"
There were apparently 6 cats and one lizard.
I hope he was getting those cats out of the replicator. He wasn't even consistently getting the same gender.
Computer, cat, orange, alive.
He’d just ask O’Brien to take one out of the pattern buffer.
And they were all the stupidest actors Brent Spiner had ever worked with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pEiLpxzuCY
So one cat with 3 more lives left.