Or was it? There was a chance, before he charged outside in his pajamas, barefoot, that the receiver was off here, and he raced to check the kitchen extension. It was in the other wing of the one-story house, but he reached it in seconds, his heart pounding now, partly from a dawning sense of guilt, partly from concern at noises he could hear: the crash of something heavy, later identified as a floor lamp joggled by passing stripes, and an intermittent whining. It crossed his mind that the tiger sounded like Lassie, a most surprising thing, but this was a fleeting impression, instantly dispelled by a jolting fact: the kitchen receiver was on. After listening once more, hoping the howler had stopped, he clapped the receiver in place again and started fast for the front door. He was scampering across the living room when that terrible scream reached him, followed by snarls that shook the house. He knew then that Rita had gone to the bedroom to see what was going on. And he knew his moment had come.
Plunging back there somehow, he found her with her back to the door, in red kimono, her hands clutched to her face in horror, the tiger at her feet. He was stretched on his belly, obviously ready to spring. Greg doesn’t remember thinking, or grasping the portent of what he saw. All in one frantic heave, he flung Rita out in the hall, slammed the door shut, and ducked — as the tiger went through the air. The crash split the door — Greg swears he saw the thready white line of raw wood. It was followed by savage barks, rising to a roar, as a paw smashed at the knob. Outside, in the hall, Rita let go with a scream that wrung his heart and at the same time made him angry, as it balked his effort to communicate — “And matter of fact,” he says, “when the children got in it, soon as her screeching touched off their screeching, and the tiger opened his cutout, you couldn’t hear yourself think.” He kept yelling, “Rita! Rita! Will you for Pete’s sake shut up? Will you listen to what I’m saying? Quit it, cut it out!”
“Greg,” she sobbed at last. “There’s a tiger in that room! Come out of there! Come out this very minute!”
“I know there’s a tiger in here!” he bellowed. “I can see the tiger, I don’t have to be told! And if I was blind and couldn’t see, I could hear yet. I’m not deaf. He’s got me blocked. Rita, do you hear me? I can’t come out! Now will you knock off with that chatter and do what I tell you to?”
“I’m going to call the police!”
“You can’t call, you got to go! Shelley—”
But he heard the dial rattle, and then came her despairing wail; “Greg! The receiver’s off! That Shelley Milstead—”
“I been telling you! Go get the cops, Rita!”
“I will, soon as I—”
“Now! And take the children out!”
“Yes, Greg! I’m on my way!”
He wasn’t at all nice to her, losing his temper in spite of himself, and he felt miserably ashamed. But in retrospect, he thinks his churlishness saved his life. For the tiger was focused on her with a bloodcurdling single-mindedness, taking her scream as a personal affront, and apparently concluding, from the angry shouts in his ear, that he had here an ally who shared his feeling about her. So instead of turning on Greg, he kept appealing for his help with little impatient barks, in between his blows at the knob. He wanted out the door, that much was clear, but Greg saw his chance to make use of this blazing obsession and take himself out the window. Keeping well to the rear, he sprang silently on the radiator, hooked his fingers on the window so he could pull it shut after him as he stepped out on the sill, before jumping down to the grass. There was a risk that the paws would smash it, but just possibly its metal frames, to eyes used to a cage, would make a psychological barrier. At any rate, it was better than nothing, and might serve temporarily. But as he lifted his foot to go through, Rita’s voice drifted in from the back yard: “Come, Lou! Annette! Hurry!”
The tiger heard, and Greg barely had time to snap the window shut and jump down out of the way. The tiger, in mid-charge, came to a sliding stop, and put out a probing paw. Touching glass, he wheeled on his ally. Greg has never been sure why jaws aimed at his face should have clamped down on his leg, but thinks the rug, shooting out from under the spring, may have been the reason, or perhaps his own backward spring may have had something to do with it. At any rate, when the fangs sank, it was in his thigh above the knee, and it was so horrible he screamed at the top of his lungs. “But,” he recalls, “it wasn’t exactly from pain. That must have been bad, but I don’t rightly remember it. What got me was this senseless, seething rage — over nothing, because I’d done no harm. I hit him, I did. With my fist, right on the end of his nose.” He doubts if these blows had much effect, but one of them, on rebound, banged the light switch, and the wall bracket lights came on. The tiger, terrified, let go, springing back to face them. Greg, having managed to hold his feet, headed for the door. But his leg, numb from the mauling it had taken, didn’t function. He collapsed against the wall, and then, half-hopping, half-staggering, made the bed and fell over it.
He lay for some moments supine, while the tiger roared at the lights, loudly proclaiming his defiance, but keeping his distance. They flanked the door, one pair on each side, so to face them he had to face it. Yet, with all the windows now closed, it was Greg’s only chance, and he racked his brain for a way to reach it. Growing sick from the wet blood on his pajama leg, he suddenly remembered a skit on TV, in which a tramp chased by a lion gained a few moments by comically undressing in flight and flinging his clothes at his pursuer, who dallied briefly to bite them. Greg threw the bedding, so that the whole roll — sheet, blanket, and spread — caught the tiger in the face and had the hoped-for effect. A striped whirlwind tore at the cloth, especially the blanket, ripping it to shreds. Greg jumped up, caught the chest of drawers, balanced against it, then slid along the wall by a series of one-legged hops and grabbed the knob. Weak, no doubt, from the battering, it came off in his hand.
Trapped, “I wrote off my misspent life,” is the way he remembers it now. “I called it a total loss, but just for the hell of it, as salvage, I meant to sell it for all I could get. I hadn’t forgotten that bite, or all that rotten guff, so uncalled for.” He assumed, perhaps correctly, that the next assault would come at the locus of blood, and as he steeled himself for the bite, determined “to let him have it on the nose or ears or what-have-you, but somewhere.” He was leaning against the chest, when he happened to think of his scissors, the utility pair he kept in it. With them, he “could let him have it in the eyes, maybe blinding him, so I’d have it evened up.” Not taking his gaze off his foe, he opened the top drawer and slipped his hand in. But his fingers probed helplessly, on account of the plastic bags that came on his suits from the cleaners. These, after what he had read in the papers about children being smothered by them, he had folded and tucked away, in this same drawer, meaning from time to time to burn them. But, as with the screens, the time hadn’t come, and they now stuffed the drawer so that no scissors or anything could be rooted out from under them — except by thorough search. Frantic, overwhelmed now by a stifling sense of guilt, he began yanking them out in handfuls and pitching them on the bed. And then he had a hellish idea.
He picked one up, spread it by the corners, held it out, said: “Hey! Hey — you!” The tiger, still worrying the scraps of blanket, looked up, then advanced on this shimmering thing, so new to his experience. He put out a paw, touched it, backed off from its limp softness. Then, as Greg, remembering those sniffs at first, made himself hold steady and continued to offer the lure, he pushed out a curious nose. “It was black,” says Greg, “and wet.” And what he prayed for happened: an inhalation, and two dimples in the plastic, over the black nostrils. They vanished, and the tiger snorted. But as the nose pushed out again, they reappeared. And this time, instead of a snort, there came a flabby report. “It was like the noise a toy balloon makes,” Greg remembers, “except that instead of a pop it was more like a plop — of the plastic, going down his throat.” Next thing Greg saw was a white belly in front of his eyes, as the tiger reared straight up, and his head hit the ceiling — “that’s right, I heard it bump.” Then five hundred pounds of cat crashed to the floor, coughing, scratching at the plastic, writhing in frantic contortions to get rid of the choking stuff. Greg turned into a wild thing himself, fighting to hold his gain. Grabbing up more plastic, he shook out another bag, watched his chance and slapped it over the terrible jaws, now gaping in strangled agony, the red tongue bulging out. The kicking, scratching and writhing went on, and so did he. At one point, he swears, “I put a hammer lock on — grabbed him from behind, with a nelson on his neck, while I jammed more plastic in.” He got ripped unmercifully, but paid no need, though bloody from head to foot. “I was afraid, but not yellowed-out,” he says. “Actually, I think my belly came back to life some minutes before, when I punched him in the snoot.”