Tigers - RAWR!!

During Kam's convalescence, we shared some quality time. Like six weeks straight of it. Not a bad thing; in fact, aside from the crazy pain management stuff at the front and back ends of it - gratefully now much less - I really enjoyed it.

Kameron is a funny guy. And he's resilient beyond belief. I think I could safely say that he's my hero. He's been through an amazing array of hardship and challenges, but, for the most part, he's pretty cheerful.

One of the things he did during his stay at home, was make up a pet name for me. Literally, a pet name. Somehow, I became his "Tiger". I think it's my hair. I have a lot of it, and it's reddish blonde, and when he was calling me a tiger, he was usually petting my head. He'd also watched the same episode of GoDiegoGo about nine hundred times, and Diego, if you don't know, is big on animals.

So, one time when he called me his Tiger, I responded, "RAWR!". This cracked him up.

"Momma, you're my Tiger"

"RAWR!"

"Momma, are you my Tiger?"

"RAWR!"

"Mom, your'e a tiger..."

Finally, to break this cycle, I said, "And you're my tiger cub!" Kam really loved this. Now, we are officially the Tiger branch of the Rainwater family.

This led me to further exploration. What are tigers like? A quick Wiki search uncovered some of the following factoids:

Tigers, unlike all other species of cat, except Jaguars, love water. They swim. Cool, right?

"Among the big cats, only the tiger and jaguar are strong swimmers; tigers are often found bathing in ponds, lakes, and rivers. Unlike other cats, which tend to avoid water, tigers actively seek it out. During the extreme heat of the day, they often cool off in pools. Tigers are excellent swimmers, able to swim up to 4 miles and carry dead prey across lakes."

SO cool. Especially the carrying dead prey across lakes part.

Tigers also prey on man more than any other big cat:

"Although humans are not regular prey for tigers, they have killed more people than any other cat, particularly in areas where population growth, logging, and farming have put pressure on tiger habitats. Most man-eating tigers are old and missing teeth, acquiring a taste for humans because of their inability to capture preferred prey."

Wait a sec. Old and missing teeth?

Ahh... this is better, in Asia, the Tiger is the King of the Beasts. Well, Queen, in our case.

The tiger replaces the lion as King of the Beasts in cultures of eastern Asia,^[131] representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath.^[132] Its forehead has a marking which resembles the Chinese character 王, which means "king"; consequently, many cartoon depictions of tigers in China and Korea are drawn with 王 on their forehead

Fearlessness, wrath, royalty...now THAT's what I'm talking about.

The Tigress raises her cubs alone - check; they are usually nocturnal - yep, that's called "me time"; and while they can have bursts of speed, but don't have much stamina...well, it does seem that Kam has aptly named me.

Little genius. Rawr.