The Tiger

Stephen O’Connor

Come here and listen to me, now. I’ll tell you, but don’t go blabbing it all over the place. It’s you and me. That’s it. Okay, I have a tiger, or to paraphrase John Lennon on the Norwegian girl, he has me. You can’t really own a tiger any more than you can own a cloud, or a star, or a person. So the tiger doesn’t have a name. I’m not going to clap some human word on him as if I had the right to gift him an identity, but if I did, it wouldn’t be Tabby, I’ll tell you that. And if I were to tell him that as a human I have “dominion over the animals,” and if he could understand me, he would laugh. And if he could talk, he would answer: “Like to see you take a walk through my domain. We’d show you dominion. And your big human brain wouldn’t do you any good.”

Don’t worry, though. He’s under control. I trust him. I can’t say I really trust him one hundred percent. I trust him like ninety-nine percent. Or maybe ninety percent. Sometimes, like sixty percent, which means I trust him more than I don’t trust him, but it’s still nerve wracking, even when I trust him ninety percent. You see, if you have a human friend you don’t completely trust, you think maybe if you leave him alone with your wife while you go to the men’s room, he may flirt with her, particularly if he’s had a couple of drinks. But if you don’t trust the tiger and the mistrust is warranted, he may rip your throat out and eat you.

It’s difficult not to consider this possibility when I study his paws. They are enormous, and they are equipped with retractable and sadly extendable claws. They are also enormous, maliciously curved and razor-sharp. His head is the size of a large watermelon, and full of ripping teeth and cruel fangs. Even without those accoutrements, the tiger would be more than a match for me. I weigh 180 pounds; he weighs 610.

But no, he’s fine, in general. Except, a couple of times he’s gotten out of the enclosed and fortified yard. Okay, a few times. One escape was quite bad. Civilians were fleeing. Sirens were screaming. Luckily, I found him in the parking garage. The beast had this poor guy cornered, and he was just sitting there watching him. The guy was sobbing a bit and there was a puddle at his feet. Naturally. I was nervous too, checking my watch and counting the hours since I had fed him. I acted like a brave passerby. “Oh, my God! A tiger!” I cried. “What in blazes? I’ll draw him away! You walk calmly to the exit.” The tiger turned and followed me to my Land Rover. so gracefully, you wouldn’t know how much he weighs if you didn’t notice the rear tires compress.

Yes, that was stressful. Having an apex predator as a friend can be trying. Especially one of the feline variety. You know how your cat sometimes comes home with a mouse in its little jaws? The tiger got out one night and came home with a dead German Shepherd hanging from its bloodied maw. Of course he meant it as a gift. Thank you, tiger. I had to dispose of the dog body down by the river. There was an article in the paper in which the reporter theorized that a gang of coyotes had killed the dog. Someone mentioned a chupacapbra. There were reports of a tiger seen prowling among midnight shadows, but most people regarded those with the same jaundiced eye with which they regard reports of UFO’s hovering over the pines. They prefer the coyote explanation. But no, between you and me, it was the tiger.

He’s a lot of work. But he is so beautiful, so grand, so beyond the human scale. He lies there like King Solomon the Wise, calmly assessing me with those amber eyes, his face an explosion of golden orange, black and white concentric stripes. I look at him and think there’s just no way this complex, magnificent creature evolved from a crap-pile of inorganic matter in some hydrothermal vent in the ocean. William Blake must have been nearer the truth when he wondered: Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Sometimes I awaken in the night and see him in the moonlight that streams through the window, watching me, his thick hawser rope of a tail coiling behind him like a serpent, and I will admit it troubles me. But he would never….

He’s my pet, and my best friend, while it serves him. I rise cautiously and creep to the bathroom, wondering, if the wild exerted itself, how long would the bathroom door hold against him?

The author (left) and the (likely?) subject of this story (right)