There were as many as 12 different cats used, each trained to do one specific task.
Jim Phelps gets his instructions from an envelope attached to the back of a painting of cats. The opponent in this episode is an art collector and a cat is used in the mission.
The cat's name was "Rusty".
In previous episodes, Willy is the last regular picked from the portfolio. In this episode Willy gets picked first.
Even though Lalo Schifrin received an Emmy nomination for the episode score, not only does Schifrin receive no screen credit, he didn't compose any score for the episode; the entire episode score is a track job of pieces from prior episodes.