This came across my Facebook stream a moment ago, and I just have to share

From Mikhail Voloshin (Facebook):

I just want to take a moment to gaze in awe at that cat’s face. If one were to try to imagine the hardest, saltiest, snarliest leather-skinned sailor to ever chill the ocean to ice with his mere gaze, and then imagine that that sailor was a cat, then you still would fall short of Herman here. This matted fluffball is a physical embodiment of the Platonic form of “sea cat”. This is the face of a cat who lives on jerkey and rum, who has sung shanties through both doldrums and typhoons, and who thinks nothing of scaling the rigging amid a squall. This cat has exchanged broadsides with Portuguese frigates, dual-wielded cutlasses in boarding duels, slit the throats of mutineers, and rescued crewmates both from cannibal spitroasts and governors’ gallows. He’s torn up his Letter of Marque, bribed a portside prostitute for the route of the Treasure Fleet, and held a dagger in his mouth while climbing up the side of a prize ship in the dead of night. He is eight months old, fifteen inches long, and weighs eleven pounds, and I would not want to cross him in a dark tavern.

Ray Chael says: “I would still pick him up and give him kisses and treats.”