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A man whose life goal was to look as similar to a cat as humanly possible lived a life darker than one would imagine.
Dennis Avner – also known as Stalking Cat – was an ex-US Navy veteran and computer programmer who underwent a series of plastic surgery operations in his bid to transform into a big cat.
In interviews, he said he had Native American heritage and that “respect for the old ways” was passed down to him from a Huron medicine man.
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“I am Huron and following a very old tradition have transformed myself into a tiger,” he said on his now-defunct website
Dennis also told interviewers that he was altering his physical appearance in accordance with what he believed was an ancient Wyandot tradition after a chief told him to “follow the ways of the tiger”.
It was during this time that he started to go by his American Indian name, Stalking Cat.
”I’ve been a cat my entire life. I always related to cats. I always had a close relationship with cats,” he explained in an interview with Only Human.
With the use of treatments like the splitting of his upper lip, pointy ears, cheek and forehead implants, tooth sharpening, and tiger-style tattoos, he gradually started to morph into the animal.
Additionally, he got piercings to which he could attach whiskers, grew his fingernails to look like claws and had silicone injections in his lips, cheeks, and chin.
Dennis also enjoyed eating raw meat and climbing trees, saying: “Being a tiger is more important to me than humanity.”
An active member of the furry community, Dennis met Tess Calhoun at a furry convention. Over several years, he formed a close friendship with Tess and her husband, Rick Weiss, and even moved in with them.
The trio became well known in the furry community and held monthly gatherings for members at their home.
Sadly Dennis often spoke of financial troubles – and in August 2007, he posted publicly on his online journal that he needed a new place to live. Tess posted that she and her husband simply could not afford to support him anymore.
Dennis eventually gained worldwide fame after he won the title of the "most permanent transformations to look like an animal" in the Guinness Book of World Records.
He was then featured on Ripley's Believe It or Not!, VH1's Totally Obsessed, Animal Planet's Weird, True & Freaky and several other TV shows.
While his extensive body work won him many admirers, it also provoked criticism and concern from physicians.
Glenn McGee, director of the Center for Bioethics at Albany Medical College in New York, told the Seattle Times that Dennis may have taken things too far.
"This is a patient who's being harmed by medicine in the interest of his tradition," he said. The newspaper adds that other doctors had expressed concern that Dennis may have suffered from a form of body dysmorphic disorder.
Sadly Dennis was found dead at 54 in his Nevada home in 2012.
A blog post by his friend Shannon Larratt, the former editor and publisher of BMEzine said the 54-year-old had taken his own life.
“Dennis identified strongly with his feline totem animals and in what he told me was a Huron tradition of actually adopting the physical form of one's totem, he transformed himself not just into a tiger, but a female tiger at that, blurring and exploring the gender line as much as the species line,” Shannon wrote.
He also described Dennis as: “a wonderful and complex person".
The statement added: "He was at times as troubled as he was remarkable, and he recently took his own life at the age of 54.”
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- Tattoos
- Animals
- Plastic Surgery
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