This is a true story

The tiger came to me while I slept. It stood next to my bed, yellow eyes staring out from black sockets, its whiskers quivering at the sight of my prostate, human form. Then it growled and took a step closer.

My habit of lucid dreaming made me wonder whether I had conjured up the tiger out of boredom. The sad fact was that my dreams were a great deal more interesting than my actual life, and definitely more exciting. I had seen the dead rise, the earthbound fly, and buildings crumble to dust. Sometimes my dreams even seemed more real than waking life, in much the same way that fiction can feel truer than fact.

But this was different. I knew that the tiger was really there.

I thought about escape, and then realized that there was nothing I could do. My feline friend was so close that I could smell his breath. Any movement on my part, and he would be upon me, a snarling, bloodthirsty pile of cat flesh, a killing machine that I did not want to tangle with, even in my dreams.

The fear woke me. My heart was thumping madly, and my nightgown clung to me like a wet rag. The tiger was gone. There was, however, an odd animal odor that made me wonder whether something had been there after all. I sat up in bed and took a deep breath. Then I walked to the window and looked out. A very large Bengal tiger stood in front of my house, looking like he owned the place.

I decided that I needed another witness before I called the cops. After all, one does not call the men in blue to inform them of a stray tiger unless one is darned sure that it is really there. I picked up the phone and dialed my neighbor Carol.

“Sorry to wake you up, but there’s a tiger in front of my house.”

“You’re dreaming. Go back to sleep.”

“No, I’m wide awake, and I’m looking at it right now.”

“What? Hold on.”

I heard a muffled exclamation, and then she was back on the line. “There really is a tiger there.”

“I told you. I guess this makes up for the dancing Koalas.”

“What dancing Koalas?”

“Don’t you remember the time I woke you up to tell you that Koala bears were dancing in my living room?”

“That never happened Kim.”

“What, that there were dancing Koalas, or that I woke you up to tell you about it?”

“We don’t have time for this. One of us has to call the police.”

“Well it had better be you; they’re never going to believe me.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a long story.”

As it turned out, it was a good idea I was not the one to call. By the time the police came the tiger had vanished without leaving behind so much as a stray whisker. Neither were there any paw prints in the freshly mowed grass. The cops and I had a long history of wolf crying incidents, and I was perfectly willing to let Carol take the fall for this one. Thankfully she did not hold it against me. After all, there really had been a tiger. To show that there were no hard feelings, she bought me a tiger wall calendar. I thought that was the end of tigers in my life, but it turned out to be just the beginning.

It began with small things. One day I opened the mail and found a set of tiger earrings from a favorite aunt. The next day I bought myself a print of a tiger cub. Then I heard on the news that a tiger had been spotted wandering in a New Jersey residential neighborhood, and had been shot dead. A great hoopla ensued, with the New Jersey department of Fish, Game, and Wildlife descending on the owner of the tiger preserve, and the townspeople trying to run her out of town. I felt badly. Perhaps that had been the same tiger I had seen. I found an adopt-a-tiger website and sent them some money.

The dead tiger began to haunt me. Although he never appeared in the flesh, he was always on the peripherals of consciousness. Over the next few months I became used to him hovering about, and my earlier terror vanished. From time to time I’d see a hint of orange out of the corner of my eye, yellowish eyes staring out at me from the mirror, black strips running across my lawn, a white-bottomed paw on my bed sheets. “What do you want?” I’d call out in the middle of the night. He never answered.

Then one day he turned up in the novel I was writing.

“So that’s what you wanted,” I told him. “You’re in it for the publicity.” He did not respond. “Just how much of this novel do you plan to take over?” I persisted.

“All of it. I am the novel. Better get used to it. Now, about chapter five…”

From that moment on my tiger fixation accelerated. I learned everything there was to know about tiger breeds, read books on wild animal training, and collected news clippings of the New Jersey tiger incident. Strangely, I began to see wild cat prints on clothing everywhere I went. Designers seem to be caught up in the same wild cat fever that I was. During the following months tiger prints found their way onto everything, from hats and bedroom slippers, to purses and shoes. Soon, the whole world seemed to be walking around wearing wild cat prints. My son painted a jungle mural on my bedroom wall with a tiger in the center.Tigers began to appear on television, in movies, and postcards. A pile of stuffed animal tigers found their way into my bed, along with a tiger striped pillow. I found one in a cereal box. There were even tigers on my curtains, slippers, and bed clothes. I wore tiger striped pajamas to bed, and brushed my teeth with a Tony the Tiger tooth brush.

One day I had had enough. I went to the one place I was sure there would be no tigers; the county zoo. That’s where I found him, somewhere in between the spider monkeys and the ocelot. He was five feet eleven, with a shock of tawny hair. If ever a man’s face looked feline, this one’s did. It had “tiger” written all over it, from the glittering eyes that stared out over a diamond-shaped snout, to the white whiskers that framed a deceptively tiny mouth. What he had in that mouth, I had no desire to learn. He seemed to be as anxious to conceal his cutlery as I was to not see it. He stared at me, wordlessly; his clawed fingertips plunged into the pockets of his wind-breaker, which barely concealed the orange hair that covered his chest.

Being the openly gregarious person I was, as well as having lost my fear of tigers half way through my novel, I began to chat with him. His name was Bert, and he had been born that way, he told me, and had lived most of his life as a recluse.”

“Why? I asked him.

“Because I was deathly afraid of people.”

“How did you get over it?”

“One day a person came and stood next to my bed,” he told me.

“Were you frightened?”

“Terrified. I hid under the bed for three days. I came out from hiding and she was gone.

“Did you think that she would hurt you?”

“Yes. It was people who killed my parents, shot them dead. I was afraid of people ever since.”

“Well, you seem to have gotten over your phobia.”

“After the person came to my house, I began to venture outdoors during daylight hours. I got a few strange looks, but nobody tried to kill me.”

“So what do you do for a living?” I asked him.

“Well, actually I’m a novelist.”

“What kind of novels do you write?”

“I used to write about tigers, but then a strange thing happened. People began to show up all over the place. Before I knew it, they were everywhere I looked. My pillowcases had faces of people on them, and stuffed dolls appeared on my bed. The walls of my house were covered with portraits. There was even a calendar on my wall with a photo of a different supermodel for each month.” He blushed slightly when he said that last part, and I turned my face away so he would not see that I had noticed. “Before long there were photos of rap groups on my T-shirts, and smiley faces on my ties. In fact, I even found a little plastic person in my cereal box the other day.”

“And did they take over your novel?”

“It’s funny you should mention it. At first the novel was going to be about tigers, for obvious reasons, but then the people started butting in. It turned out to be a very different kind of novel than I had originally conceived. The people even chose the title. Can you imagine that?”

Suddenly he stared at me with a strange expression on his face. His eyes were a startling shade of green with gold flecks in them. “You look familiar. Haven’t I met you somewhere before?”

“You look familiar too,” I told him.

“Well, it’s a small world.”

“Sure is.”

He picked up my smooth, human hand and took it in his large, hairy one, then gave it a squeeze.