Aye, 'ere's one for ya!
This chap had the proverbial nine lives going for him.
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Cat-Man II

    Young David Merrywether is travelling with his scientist parents and his sister in the jungles of Burma when they are attacked by "bandits," and all but the boy David are killed. Left to die, David is rescued by a tigress who raises him as her own. Growing up he gradually acquires all the abilities of the cat family.

    Once reaching manhood, David Merrywether returns to his native America, where he is struck by the crime and corruption that grips his country. Deciding to use his great powers, David, creates a crude costume (as seen here), adopts the identity of Cat-Man, and sets about using his fantastic powers to battle the evils he encounters. But even his cat-like abilities to leap great distances and climb nearly anything, along with enhanced senses including night-vision and hearing, are not enough to save him from being killed. In his first outing as a crime fighter, he is stabbed in the back. But the sacred tiger goddess comes to his aid and grants Cat-Man another life, and he captures the criminals that had killed him. Further cases awaited Cat-Man in the more familiar, sleeker outfit that we see him wearing now.

    In another adventure, David, who has now enlisted in the service as a lieutenant, rescues Katie Conn from a man who claims to be her uncle. The abusive man is soon brought to justice for his crimes, and young Katie Conn becomes both the ward of David Merrywether and Cat-Man's partner Kitten, (see individual entry). And the two had many an adventure fighting the foes of America and the evils of the world, especially the villains Mr. Peccary and Dr. Macabre.

    Fortunately, Cat-Man would only loose a few more of his "lives" before he learned to dodge lethal dangers. Later in their joint adventures, Kitten somehow transforms from an adolescent girl into a grown woman. How this happened is never revealed, but this development leads to a romance for the feline pair, as Katie already has a crush on David. The two have many adventures together before they end their crime-fighting careers.

    In a different account of his origin, David Merrywhether tells his friend the Deacon (see individual entry) how his mother, Antoinette Burottte', a famous animal trainer, had taught David all there was to know about the big cats. David had a natural affinity for the animals, and soon he was proficient in his command of the animal family of big cats. But one day a strange deranged man escapes a local institution, and, in an act of revenge against David's mother, kills her. David grows up and takes control of his mother's circus act. One day David finds a baby girl in a cage with the fierce cats and rescues her. That little girl is Katie Conn, who grows up to be his partner, Kitten. She has learned all of David's tricks for controlling the big circus cats. On the very night that David tells the Deacon his story, he again encounters his mother's killer, as the maniac returns to the scene of the crime and dies as a victim of one of the very cats that had been in his mother's care. Such is justice in the animal world.

    Why Cat-Man decides to relate this version of his beginnings is not clear. Perhaps he is unaware of his true origins, and maybe this is how he truly remembers things being. Or perhaps David feels that his and Kitten's real origins are too fantastic to believe, and he uses this more mundane origin to explain his abilities to his friend, the Deacon. Then again, maybe it's a case of the truth being somewhere in between the two accounts, unlikely as that may seem. In any event, it is his first origin that tells the real story behind Cat-Man's heritage.