Feral Cat

Character Sheet

Feral Cat's Myspace Page

Name: James Carl Vandermeer

Heroic Identities: The Flying Dutchman, Kapitein Oranje, Feral Cat

Birthdate: August 24, 1957, Rotterdam, MI

Height: 5’11”

Age: 49

Background / History

James Carl Vandermeer was born and raised in the small town of Rotterdam, in the western part of Michigan; like the majority of residents of Rotterdam, Vandermeer is the descended from a group of Dutch immigrants who came to the United States during the second half of the 19th century. His great-grandparents on his father’s side were immigrants, as were his grandparents on his mother’s side.

Even as a young child, Vandermeer was unusually athletically gifted; in junior high, he realized that he had, in fact, been born with super speed and agility. Vandermeer chose to keep the full extent of his athletic capabilities secret, but became an accomplished high school athlete; he still holds the Michigan High School Athletic Association Division A high jump record, and he helped Rotterdam High to its first and only state basketball tournament appearance.

Graduating in 1975, with the potential threat of the Nomos invastion looming, Vandermeer elected to forego an athletic scholarship to Michigan State and offer his services to various super groups preparing to defend the planet against Doctor Destroyer. As The Flying Dutchman, he joined the League of Heroes and participated in several crucial operations, both on land and in outer space, during Destroyer's attack on San Francisco and the Nomos invasion.

After the battle against the Nomos, the government of the Netherlands invited The Flying Dutchman to become both a Dutch citizen and the official national superhero, there being no native standout superpowers. Vandermeer agreed, and at the advice of the Dutch government changed his secret identity to that of Kapitein Oranje since he could not, in fact, fly.

Vandermeer remained in the Netherlands until October 1989, when he resigned his commission as national superhero of the Netherlands and dropped out of sight. Speculation at the time was that he was asked to leave, as Kapitein Grillig, a native Dutch super, had risen to prominence; that he had resigned out of frustration with the fairly menial tasks the Dutch government was giving him; or that psychological problems had led to his departure. As his resignation coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall, it occasioned much less coverage and comment than it otherwise might have.

In actuality, Vandermeer had resigned owing to several unsettling physical changes that had begun taking place. At first, these changes had seemed natural enough given his intense training regimen: increased flexibility, improved sense of balance and reflexes, and a jumping ability that was phenomenal even compared to his previous ability level. By the late 1980s, however, he experienced other changes which training could not explain: 1) increased ability to see at night; 2) a sort of sixth sense for spatial awareness and changing weather patterns; 3) unusual growth of body hair; and 4) increased appetite for meat. Failing to account for these changes, Vandermeer panicked and removed himself from the public sector before any of these developments could be detected by anyone else.

All of these changes continued over the next several years, and Vandermeer was faced with the inescapable conclusion that he was turning into some sort of man-cat hybrid. He developed cat eyes, pointed teeth, strong, sharp claws, and a small tail. Hoping to reverse these changes, Vandermeer endeavored to discover the cause of his transformation. After years of research and numerous dead ends, he obtained, through not entirely legal means, classified files from Project Manticore.

This Project was undertaken by a secret CIA branch, which had conducted covert, unauthorized experiments in animal-human hybridization in the mid-1950s with the aide of Doctor Phillippe Moreau. Posing as doctors, Project Manticore agents had injecting unsuspecting individuals in four small towns in different areas of the United States with substances designed to cause slight changes in the oblivious test subjects. One of the Project’s target towns had been Rotterdam, and Vandermeer discovered that his mother had been used as a test subject when she was pregnant with him. Because test subjects were never injected with doses large enough to cause marked changes, and because they had been secretly innoculated when Project Manticore was shut down in 1957, none of the test subjects had been any the wiser as to their participation in this experiment.

Vandermeer’s mother had been innoculated while still pregnant; Vandermeer concluded that somehow the test substance, which would have had a much more marked impact on his genetic makeup while still in the womb, had been reactivated at some point. This could have been due to a combination of his super powers, his unusually intense training regimen, or exposure to something else, such as cosmic rays or Nomos weaponary during his early days as a costumed hero.

Vandermeer spent several more years attempting to reverse the cat mutations; failing to find any possible course of action in that regard, he suffered from a bout of depression and instability which led him to completely withdraw from society. Living alone in the wilderness, he honed and partially surrendered to his (literally) cat-like abilities. When a logging company encroached on his territory, he attacked and massacred the entire operation one night. The savagery of his own attack came as a surprise to him and jolted him back to a more conscious control of himself. Having attempted to deny his feral nature, then having given into it for a time, he resolved to use his unexpected, and not entirely wanted, powers to more constructive ends.

In 2005 he decided to make Millenium City his new base of operations. He has generally targeted petty criminals and operates under the cover of night; as a result, he has yet to be detected or identified, although he has decided that when and if such a discovery should come to pass, his heroic identity will now, appropriately enough, be Feral Cat. An understandable distrust of authority has led him to avoid identifying himself to local authorities as a superhero. His haniwork, however, has been noted, and local crimefighters are uneasy concerning this unknown and rather violent independent operator.

While unusually hairy, Vandermeer’s face is not hairy enough to arouse suspicion. If one could see his eyes and teeth as well as his hair, however, it would be difficult to resist the inference that he is a hybrid. Contacts and a disinclination to chatting conceal these characteristics. As such, in Millenium City Vandermeer usually uses his actual identity during his daily activities. He is employed as a receptionist at the YMCA and is known as that guy from Rotterdam who was the track star and was on the basketball team that managed to get to state in 1975. Those who are acquainted with him only as James Vandermeer, both in Millenium City and back in Rotterdam, regard him as something of an failure, as he never capitalized on his athletic abilities after graduation, instead leading the life of a drifter, as near as anyone could tell. His parents, still alive, believe this to be the case.

Although 50 years of age, Vandermeer does not appear to be any older than his late 20s or early 30s. This slow aging has not yet been explained, but is no doubt due to the same set of factors as his other traits. He is in perfect health, it would seem, but it is not yet apparent if his slow aging is equivalent with an increased life span.

Powers & Abilities

Feral Cat possesses abilities which largely mirror those of a cat. They are amplified, however, by his own native superpowers. He possesses unparalleled agility and a remarkable sense of balance. His strength is ususual for his body size; combined with his agility and speed, this makes him a truly formidable fighter. He does not, however, have a great deal of fighting finesse--striking quickly and fading equally quickly is his mode of operation, although one can tell he has had some rudimentary martial arts training in the past. His acrobatic combination of powers allow him to disappear quickly, be it by running, incredible jumps, squeezing into tight spaces, or some combination of these abilities.

Beyond these amplified physical abilities, Feral Cat has the feline ability to see at night as well as during the day. Like a cat, Feral Cat is extremely attuned to weather patterns and spatial awareness. Although he does not have whiskers like a cat, he is able to sense movement in a way other humans--super or not--simply cannot. This is not a psionic power, but a physical mutation caused by the Project Manticore injection passed to him as a fetus. Perhaps owing to the effect of the Project Manticore innoculation, Feral Cat also heals quite rapidly, but he has been unable to determine the origin of this ability.