Loving On Kittens

MY SISTER STOOD at the fenced in enclosure at the big cat sanctuary, admiring a magnificent tiger. Sis was in a group of tourists, well attired upper middle class types. In retrospect, I wish I'd been there. Without warning the tiger lifted a leg and sprayed down the whole group, but good, missing nobody. Pandemonium ensued. Shrieks of horror and disgust echoed off nearby mountains. My sister just stood there, a smile of satisfaction revealing her contentment. She later said she felt honored. She told me she wanted to slap some sense into her anal companions, who valued their clean clothing more than a magnificent gesture from a magnificent being. It made me jealous to think about it, jealous of her. The others, forget 'em. Typical Americans, needing a better life. So I visited the sanctuary myself, thinking I deserved at least as much tigerly attention. I never got it. No spray for me. The group I was with had dispersed by the time I came to the tiger section, and I alone was evidently insufficiently worthy to attract attention. But I had no intention of leaving without something special happening to me. I looked around. I saw nobody. Fine with me; everybody there was a stranger to me, and we all know that Americans do not like strangers. So I felt safe, confident I wouldn't be caught and arrested or chastised. I slipped under the fence, and walked up to the iron bars, which were spaced far enough apart to permit a huge paw to poke through. The tiger knew I was there and rolled over on his back, belly in the air. I assumed he wanted belly rubs. He was four feet long head to butt, four hundred pounds. His fur was coarse and brittle, not soft like a house cat's. But he got his belly rubs, and I could swear, and I swear to this day, I could hear him purr. Lions and tigers can interbreed. when they told me that, I freaked. I had no idea. Then, they showed me a few "ligers", bred evidently by human idiots. In the wild, they seldom if ever interbreed. If they did, there'd be more of them. The ones I saw were huge huge. They look more like tigers than lions, and they don't stop growing. They have all kinds of physical problems; misformed bones and jaws, other health issues, and they don't live long. There are just over three thousand tigers left in the world, or something like that; extinction appears inevitable. Maybe we can all get together and prevent it from happening; nobody wants to lose this magnificent animal. You almost wish there were too many tigers and not enough humans, instead of the other way around.