Sliver Cat

Also Known As: Latin joke-name Felis glabraspiculata in Henry H. Tryon, 1939; often misprinted Silver Cat
Region/Culture: North America
Mythos: Urban Legends & Contemporary Folklore, Cryptids
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: It carries a knob at the end of a very long tail, hard and bare on one side and set with spikes or burrs on the other, and uses both faces in turn on its prey.
Role in Mythos: It is one of the bunkhouse beasts of the American lumber camps, a tall-tale predator told to amuse the crew and to frighten the newest hand.
Relation to Humans: It waits on a limb above a trail, stuns a passing lumberjack with the smooth side of its tail-ball and hauls him up with the spiked side to be eaten. Charles E. Brown wrote that Paul Bunyan’s crews suffered continual losses to it, while Henry H. Tryon added that on the ground it was harmless.

A full moon over the northern pines, a logging road cut pale through the dark, and on one limb above it a shape that is almost a cat. The body is too big for any bobcat. The ears are tufted. From the branch hangs a tail eleven feet long, and at its tip, turning slowly, is a ball. That is the picture Henry H. Tryon chose to end on when he wrote the creature up in 1939, and it is a good one: a Sliver Cat crouched with its tail poised, he said, makes a startling silhouette against the full moon.

The Sliver Cat reached print twice in the 1930s, and the whole record is those two short entries. Charles E. Brown of Madison, Wisconsin, included it in his booklet Paul Bunyan Natural History (1935), naming it on the title page alongside the Hodag, the Hidebehind, the Rumptifusel and the Goofus Bird. Four years later Tryon gave it page 43 of Fearsome Critters, published by the Idlewild Press at Cornwall, New York, with drawings by Margaret R. Tryon. Everything written about the animal since goes back to one or the other.

Brown’s version is brisk. He calls it a fierce denizen of the pineries, a huge cat with tasseled ears and fiery red eyes set in vertical rather than horizontal slits. Its very long tail ends in a ball-shaped knob, bare and hard on the lower side, bristling with sharp spikes on the upper. The cat sits on a limb and waits. When a man passes underneath it knocks him flat with the hard side, then picks him up with the spikes. Paul Bunyan’s crews, Brown adds, suffered continual losses from these big cats.

Tryon, writing like a field naturalist with a straight face, fills in the measurements and supplies the Latin, Felis glabraspiculata. A big animal of the northern pine woods, sometimes reaching three hundred pounds, with tasselled ears and red eyes. Here the slits run horizontally, the exact reverse of Brown, and neither man explains himself. A mature cat carries a tail eleven feet long. The ball on the end is split down the middle: one half polished smooth, the other studded with a barbed growth like a burr.

Tryon’s account of the hunt is the heart of the entry. The cat crouches on a limb overhanging the trail and waits for footsteps on the frozen ruts below. Down comes the polished side with a flat knock on the skull, a pat, Tryon calls it, and then the burred side swings in, catches in the senseless man’s hide, and the tail draws him up to the roost to be eaten. In the mating season the Sliver Cat beats the ball against its own chest, careful to use only the smooth side, a courtesy it does not extend to lumberjacks.

Neither author gives it an origin. There is no first Sliver Cat, no named victim, no hunter who finally brought one down, and no telling of where the creatures went. Brown is candid about the genre. His animals, he wrote, were the subject of tall tales told in the bunkhouses at night to create mirth or to impress and frighten the greenhorns, and he gathered his descriptions from reliable as well as unreliable and doubtful sources. Tryon dedicated his book to everyone who had held the bag on a snipe hunt. The Sliver Cat belongs to that family of jokes. Its real prey was the new man in camp, sent down a dark trail with his eyes fixed on the branches.

One puzzle clings to it. Tryon also printed a separate Ball-Tailed Cat, Felis candaglobosa, about the size of a wildcat, which drops from a limb onto a passing lumberjack and pounds him to death with a bony ball, and in the rutting season drums on a hollow log to call its mate. He noted that it had often been confused with the Sliver Cat and the Dingmaul, and insisted that a careful study of the equipment and habits of the three showed they were by no means the same, though they might be distantly related. Modern reference works have mostly gone the other way. Wikipedia files the Sliver Cat as a variant of the Ball-Tailed Cat and dates the earliest written mention of the ball-tailed cat to Tryon in 1939, which overlooks Brown’s Sliver Cat in print four years earlier. Brown himself has no Ball-Tailed Cat at all. The name has trouble of its own: it is regularly misprinted as Silver Cat, and even Tryon’s cross-reference reads that way in the modern transcription of his book.

The Sliver Cat is also missing from the earlier standard collection of lumberwoods beasts, William T. Cox’s Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods (1910). It enters the written record with Brown and never gathers a story beyond its hunting method. That absence is part of what it is: a single, well-built trap of an idea, passed around the stove until two collectors wrote it down.

Its powers follow from where it sits. Height is everything to the Sliver Cat. With three hundred pounds on a limb and eleven feet of tail to swing, it strikes from above before a man knows anything is there, and its two-faced club lets it stun and grapple in one motion. Take the branch away and the menace goes with it. Tryon is explicit that the animal is harmless on the ground, so its whole danger depends on a tree leaning over a trail and a traveller who never looks up. Nothing in either account says how to kill one.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Sliver Cat?

The Sliver Cat is a fearsome critter of American lumber-camp folklore, a huge tasselled-eared cat with red eyes and a very long tail ending in a ball. One side of the ball is smooth and hard and the other is spiked or burred. It appears in Charles E. Brown’s Paul Bunyan Natural History (1935) and Henry H. Tryon’s Fearsome Critters (1939).

How does the Sliver Cat hunt?

The Sliver Cat waits on a tree limb above a trail. When a person walks underneath, it knocks the victim senseless with the smooth side of its tail-ball, then hooks him with the spiked or burred side and pulls him up to the branch to eat. Tryon says it is harmless on the ground.

Is the Sliver Cat the same as the Ball-Tailed Cat?

Henry H. Tryon said no. In Fearsome Critters (1939) he printed the Ball-Tailed Cat as a separate, wildcat-sized animal and wrote that it was often confused with the Sliver Cat and the Dingmaul but was not the same. Some modern reference works treat the Sliver Cat as a variant of the Ball-Tailed Cat, and Charles E. Brown’s 1935 booklet includes only the Sliver Cat.

Did lumberjacks really believe in the Sliver Cat?

The Sliver Cat was a tall tale rather than a sincere belief. Charles E. Brown wrote that the lumber-camp animals were described in bunkhouse stories told at night to create mirth or to frighten greenhorns. Tryon dedicated his collection to people who had been taken on a snipe hunt, the classic prank played on newcomers.

How big is the Sliver Cat?

Henry H. Tryon describes the Sliver Cat as sometimes reaching three hundred pounds, with a tail eleven feet long on a mature animal. Charles E. Brown calls it simply a huge cat with a very long tail.