I am a member of the cat family.

The lion, the leopard, the jaguar and the lynx are all members of the cat family.

I am the largest member of the cat family. I am called a tiger. From the nose to the tail, I am ten feet long. My weight is about 350 kilograms.

We tigers live in different parts of Asia. But I live in India. The people of India have given me great honor. They have made me their national animal. Now they don’t kill me sport or for my skin.

My body has a lovely coat. It has the yellow color of an orange. I have narrow black stripes on my skin body. My cheeks are white. The inner side of each leg is also white. I have a large white spot over each eye. My whiskers are also white. They are quite stiff.

My eyes are large and round. I can see things clearly at night. I have harp ears and a good nose. I can hear the lowest sound. I can smell things from a distance. My paws have pads. They make no sound when I walk or run.

Meat is my favorite food. I don’t like fruit, milk or vegetables. I like the flesh of pigs, goats and deer. I also like buffalo meat. I kill an animal only when I am hungry. I never kill for sport.

I don’t like the hot sun. I love the cool shade of the forest trees. I sleep by day and hunt by night. I don’t hunt in packs. I have to hunt alone. I like to eat in a quite place. So I drag my kill to a corer. After eating my fill, I go to a pool or river for drink water.

I can run very fast. I can swim also. I am not good at climbing trees. But I can jump to great heights. I can jump to a height of eighteen feet.

Forest is my home. When I was young, I lived my mother in a cave. I had a brother and sister also how I loved both of them! I don’t know where they are now.

We lied with our mother for one year. She gave us lessons in hunting. She was a very good teacher. She taught us the art of hunting. We learnt this art very quickly. Now our mother didn’t have to hunt for us. We could easily hunt for our own food. So we made separate homes for ourselves. My own house is in a big cave in the forest.

Some years ago, we tigers were many thousands in number. We lived in forests and had enough to eat. We ate the flesh of wild animals. But then man started killing us. He cut down the forests here we lived. He became our enemy.

The dog is the natural enemy of the cat. The mongoose is the natural enemy of the snake. But we tigers have no natural enemy. Only man is our enemy. He has taken away from s our home and our food. Some of the tigers are very angry. They have become man-eaters.