The humans called Dennis Avner “Stalking Cat.” His kind referred
to him as “meow.”
The cat-like Avner, who held the Guinness Book of World
Records mark for body modifications — including a bifurcated
lip, extensive tiger-stripe facial tattooing, surgically pointed
ears, and silicone injections in the cheeks, chin, and forehead —
died earlier this month.
The human authorities suspect he killed himself. I suspect
humans, threatened that one of their own had defected to the cat
community, killed him.
Human nature, alien to Stalking Cat, remains quite familiar with
suicide. The dearth of documented cases of self-inflicted felicide
raises suspicions. Only an Ace Ventura could definitively answer
this whodunit. The one certainty here is that it’s a jungle out
there for a person who realizes he, she, or it is an animal trapped
in a human’s body.
Dennis Avner never found acceptance among mankind as a felid
despite the plastic surgeries, the tattoos, and the silicone
injections. He was, in a loose sense, a real-life Philip Nolan — a
manimal without a species.
Biology is the new racism. The phobia against transanimals
recalls the societal obstinacy regarding transgenders. We exiled
them to the “third bathroom,” inscribed pesky reminders of their
physiology on their driver’s licenses, and imprisoned them with
criminals of the opposite gender. Some men still won’t consider
dating a woman who was born a “man” — whatever that antiquated
designation means. One surmises that Stalking Cat encountered
similar prejudices among potential dating partners of all sexes and
species.
Society’s rejection of transanimals results in their rejection
of themselves. When a man splits his tongue, amputates his arms,
and fuses his legs together to realize his inner serpent, society
calls him crazy, a freak, and troubled — instead of what he is: a
snake. We will become as sane as they are only when we finally see
transanimals as they see themselves.
All this recalls the dark ages when we denied that one
biologically born a male who surgically remade herself as female
was as much a woman as your mother. Dennis Avner was as much a cat
as Chastity Bono is a man.
Yet, many landlords won’t rent to transanimals. Their contracts
stipulate “no pets.” Restaurants still post “no dogs allowed”
signs. Public parks demand that you keep animals on a leash. Dennis
Avner served in the Navy. But he did so in the form of a human
being. The ban on transspecies soldiers, sailors, airmen, and
Marines persists despite the obvious intimidation factor that a
battalion of tiger-men would impose on the enemy.
What was Stalking Cat supposed to make of the many restrictions,
formal and informal, that civilization imposed upon his wild
spirit?
Transanimals face a gross double standard vis-à-vis
transgenders. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
decrees that the Affordable Care Act forbids discrimination against
transgendered patients within federally funded programs. U.S.
District Judge Mark Wolf, a Reagan appointee, has ordered
Massachusetts taxpayers to fund gender reassignment surgery for
Michelle Kosilek, an inmate convicted of murdering his wife after
she caught him in her clothes. Sixteen state governments find a
compelling interest in forbidding employers from taking into
account a man’s metamorphosis into a woman, or vice versa, when
hiring and firing.
By what logic do these states, the federal judge, and HHS, which
prohibit discrimination based on gender identity, then permit
discrimination based on animal identity?
In fits of self-absolution, tormentors conveniently maintain
that the extinction of Stalking Cat, along with a transgender
suicide rate 25 times the general population’s, proves that
self-mutilation begins a slow self-destruction that ends in one’s
ultimate destruction. Society has dysphoria over sexual, and
species, dysphoria. We lose some of our humanity when we don’t
extend it to gharials, capybaras, and narwhals. Cats are people
too.
Mourn Dennis Avner’s tragic demise. But celebrate the miracle of
his longevity. While most house cats survive to about 15, Stalking
Cat lived to 54. If you last that many years more, you will surely
meet others of his kind.
It’s a bestial domain we inhabit. Or, as Cat Stevens — no
relation to Stalking Cat — told us, “Ooh baby, baby it’s a wild
world.” It’s getting wilder.
