whiskers

The sight of Richard Parker, a growling behemoth of musculature and whiskers, is the most fearsome.

“That’s how they greet,” Ebsen told me a few weeks before, “their whiskers send signals straight up to their brain which tells them all about your smell, your hormones, everything.”

They would close their eyes and move their ears and whiskers forward when feeling friendly, or constrict their pupils while flattening their ears and flicking their tongues when feeling aggressive.

The athlete opts to compete in qualifying rounds with a full set of whiskers before shaving them into a half-beard for the finals.

Stories spread through the city of a bearded man - nicknamed “whiskers” in the Xhosa language - who made people disappear at night.