From top: a tag, the whisker in question, a human hair.
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens......
So I thought I knew what whiskers were. They're the little hairs on the sides of animal's faces that help them gauge width when navigating small spaces. For example a cat's whiskers are as wide as the widest part of their body. If they're going through a tunnel and they're whiskers brush, the space is too small and they'll get stuck.
That's what I thought.
Upon looking it up online, Vibrissa are sensitive and in some animals help them detect air movement. And similar to how eyelashes protect eyes, they help keep foreign particles from being inhaled.
Mojo has several sets of whiskers: on his snout, his eyebrows and on the side of his face. For the most part his whiskers are as expected, kind of like eyelashes. But then there's the set on his cheeks. He has three on each side. They're black, hard and especially thick.
Matt was sitting on the couch Monday when he got stabbed. The offending object? One of Mojo's whiskers that, for whatever reason, is no longer attached to his face. (Popular theories: it just fell out, Gunnar yanked it out or it got stuck in the couch and was then yanked free.) We didn't realize what it was at first. It was so thick I thought it was part of a black plastic tag. Except that if you look closely it has a base and tapers down to a thinner end. Really, it feels more like super hard plastic than a soft eyelash. And when we inspected Mojo, he now has two whiskers on one side and three on the other.
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