The pet cat of Lieutenant Reginald Barclay on Earth, named after Voyager's Talaxian morale officer because of his owner's obsession with the lost starship.
Neelix is the cat that shares Reginald Barclay's flat in San Francisco. It appears in the Voyager episode Pathfinder, which shows Barclay working on Starfleet's effort to contact Voyager and slipping back into holodeck dependency.
Barclay has spent so long in a simulation of Voyager and its crew that they have become his closest friends, and he has named his real companion after the ship's cook. When Deanna Troi visits, she finds him unpacked, sleepless and talking mostly to the cat.
The animal is a small sign of both Barclay's loneliness and his devotion to the project. The real Neelix eventually hears of his namesake once regular contact with Earth is established.