'Stalking Cat' Daniel Avner found dead in 'suicide' after years of transforming

reply to post by NewAgeMan


I think it's awesome when people turn themselves into a living work of art.

A work of art, often times is not appreciated until the artist is dead.

These people live their glory, as they are, not waiting for death to bring attention.

The Stalking Cat, lived that dream, and I am sad the world lost such a person.

reply to post by Sissel

My heart also goes out to him, and I agree that the world is never the same when someone leaves it. Don't get me wrong I'm a very compassionate person. That said, I don't feel that the human body really belongs to us entirely, but that it's on loan I guess you could say, given to us as is. Nevertheless, while I don't believe in such things doesn't meant that I don't also feel a loss, along with a little heartbreak learning that he comitted suicide.

reply to post by JohnnyAnonymous


His being native is rather moot in this discussion.

"Learning the lessons of a cat" and BECOMING a cat are night and day apart.

Should have just stuck with being a skinwalker. That might have gotten him further.

Maybe he was a very lonely guy who didn't fit in any circles, click or "normal" society but in his way he brought everyone together to talk cr@p about him or go "ohhh look at that guy" at least he could give what he couldn't achieve and that is a feat in itself.

RIP

Isn't he from Michigan? Also is there some link to him and that girl the movie 'Monstet' is based on? I recall an interview with her brother or something and he is him. I'm thinking the documentary by that one British guy who does all those crazy docs!

Peace!(¥)

I enjoy body modification, i have stretched ears, several piercings, tattoos, etc. Nothing as extreme as him, but i still understand the goals and satisfaction that come from it. To immediately assume he was mentally ill is ridiculous. Breast implants, corseting and even circumcision are all pretty extreme modifications of the body, and those are all just considered "normal" now. Just because someone wants and enjoys something drastically different than you do, does not mean that they are sick, and i expected people on this site of all places to understand that.

Originally posted by Bodhi7
Just because someone wants and enjoys something drastically different than you do, does not mean that they are sick, and i expected people on this site of all places to understand that.

I've always found it interesting that people are willing to reach out and grasp a theory such as "the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis", where there could possibly be some 'species' that are not human at all in appearance, and they would accept such with open arms...

Yet our species on the flipside, has trouble accepting 'one of their own' that modifies their own body and screams that it's against God's intentions (which apparently I missed the memo on). Of course if you just want to pierce your ears or belly button, well.. were ok with that.

Go figure...

reply to post by JohnnyAnonymous


Great point. This world is a strange place.

Originally posted by JohnnyAnonymous
I thought "wow, this guy must really like cats!". It wasn't till several years later that I learned that he had an Indian heritage and had been told (supposedly) after a discussion with a Native chief who told him he needed to 'follow the ways of the tiger.'

I knew him.

I liked him. I loved talking to him. He was so gentle (emotionally) with people.

Dennis, a native American, part Huron, part Lakota had spent more than $200.000 on plastic surgery to make himself look as a tiger.

He had a lot of innovative ideas.

He apparently must not have had any money when he died as I found a "GoFundMe" article by his brother asking for donations for the funeral.

He was poor, yes.

It's heartbreaking.

Originally posted by JohnnyAnonymous
Yet our species on the flipside, has trouble accepting 'one of their own' that modifies their own body and screams that it's against God's intentions (which apparently I missed the memo on). Of course if you just want to pierce your ears or belly button, well.. were ok with that.

Go figure...

He had gotten to the point where he hated to travel because of the remarks and the stares. Some people couldn't look beyond the surface to see the truth.

(I just learned of his death today and I'm heartbroken.)

Originally posted by Zcustosmorum
To all those knocking this guy, you shouldn't, takes balls to do that to yourself, you folks are just a bunch of pussies

He has breast implants. He was a female cat.

reply to post by JohnnyAnonymous


Following the ways of the tiger doesn't mean transforming your body in that way. But he was an adult, and he made that choice.

I have also been told that my spiritual animal is a Bengal tiger, but I am not about to transform my body to look like one. I was born human, and this is who I am supposed to be.

IMO he went the wrong way, and did not understand what it means to follow the ways of the tiger.

reply to post by JohnnyAnonymous


Sad, RIP my friend.

Although I would never make myself look like a cat, I can appreciate the time and effort he put into making himself look like a cat. And despite the people here saying that he looked ridiculous, I thought he looked kinda cool. I love people who dare to be different.

I've had some tiger stripes etc on me over the last weekish for Stalking Cat.

It saddens me that people feel the need to shield their children and hate on such people. There have been so many unique tribes and cultures all over the planet, and I can only assume those people would shield their children etc from those, too.

Well I dunno ... stick your head in the sand, am gonna go sleeveless and stripey for another couple of weeks and I hope if any children see me they eventually work out am just me. Sorry for your loss Byrd.

Originally posted by Asktheanimals
What? He didn't get run over by a car?
[sic] Attention whores

Originally posted by JohnPhoenix
Er.. Well.. I guess he really did want to see if he really did have nine lives. Opps!

He's a Darwin Winner for sure in my book. [sic] We don't need sane people doing stupid stuff like that which could influence our impressionable children.

I be as polite as I can ... but you both had plenty of time to say demeaning things to Stalking Cat while she was alive. Why don't you complain about Lucky Rich about body mods, or someone who is alive and might be able to actually answer your questions rather than talking about a poor dead person? At least you might learn something from the response.

You're also welcome to start with me.

Interesting how some commentators feel that tigers live far away from the US.
Sure, there were no tigers in the Americas at the point of the Columbian exchange, but then again there were also no horses for thousands of years (and the re-introduced horse became a central part of many Native American cultures).

By 2004 there were more caged and backyard tigers in the US alone than in the Asian wild.
Wild Asian tigers apparently number 3 062, while US tigers number between 5 000 and 10 000.
bigcatrescue.org...
Although tigers may not be roaming about the landscape freely (I hope), the modern US is also the land of the tigers.

This is also how I understood Avner's modification: it combined old impulses of body decoration with new tools, and an affinity to an introduced animal (even if the big cat family is hardly new to the US) to demonstrate the new global realities. By that interpretation it was an artistic statement, and also unsettling in overthrowing stereotypical notions of the "indigenous" and what certain people should feel about certain animals in a postmodern reality of constant exchange.

Body modification seems less moralized if it is done to look more like the prescribed norms of beauty or fashion, even if this is also dangerous.
Frightening skin-lightening creams in African and Asian countries immediately come to mind, or cancer causing tanning beds for naturally pale people.

Apart from the obesity epidemic and all kinds of surgical interventions to look "healthy", there's also anorexia and bigorexia.
In SA, almost every urban supermarket or pharmacy has aisles of body-building products, and many have a special section where muscle-men sell a range of expensive pills and powders.
OK, some of this market is safe and legit, but some of these products come with age restriction guidelines of 18, but yet I see strange-looking young males with unnaturally over-sized bodies and boyish faces buying these buckets all the time.
According to recent tests in SA some contain dangerous substances that aren't even on the label, and the labels are scary enough.

I have nothing against sporty bodies or body-building, but I have little doubt that many young men are dangerously modifying their bodies, often to fit into an overblown gender construct pushed by society, from children's action figures to men's magazines, the sport's industry (with all its pseudo-morality) and Hollywood.
Clearly it also happens with the tacit approval of coaches, and even parents and doctors.
Then one hears of rich mothers who organize botox parties for their teenage daughters!

Now we have a range of TV programs that deal with botched beauty surgeries, and botox treatments gone wrong.
All these things are "risky" we are told, yet this truth is overshadowed by "good surgeons" fixing the stuff-ups of the "bad surgeons"! So it's not the impulse to modify the body for cultural (rather than medical) norms that is judged, just the "bad surgeons".
There's also a class superiority about it.
If you do these things to copy the upper class (and the rich and famous) then that's being upwardly mobile and fine.
If one modifies the body to look different to them, it's taboo.

Interestingly predator motifs like big cat prints also have a class history (the royalty and super-rich once kept big cats and various art with the theme to portray their power and viciousness), rendering them kitsch or trashy when used by poor and marginalized people.

I don't think this culture can stand in judgement of Avner.
He was just an interesting person and a curiosity.
Meanwhile, unrealistic beauty norms are pushed on children every day, and many will one day suffer the consequences of the brainwashing.