That’s about all I had to say when a teacher asked me to write something about tigers.

Okay, I certainly understand why my teachers in elementary school didn’t recognize the possibility that I might be a future newspaper reporter, and an investigative reporter at that.

Here’s a bit of evidence. I came across this today while looking for something else (isn’t that how it usually works?). It was one of those little things my mother saved from my early school years. I found it in a box of various clippings, letters, and other papers after her death in 2013 a few months short of her 99th birthday. She saved more than I imagined.

Tigers? Cats? I had never lived with a cat, although we had a dog until I was about 5 years old. Perhaps this exercise planted something in my brain that burst forth a couple of decades later when Meda and I got our first cat. The first step in a long path to the present. Our count of fabulous felines must be over two dozen by this point. We remember all of them very, very fondly.

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