Cats that will eat your whole face

A Van Ingen piece doing its best to remind you why you should be afraid for your face.

I love my job, not least because I get to focus my research on cats that will eat your whole face. I haven't figured out (yet) how to roll that research into the opportunity to see cats who will eat your whole face, but I did get to present my research at a faculty lecture series, invading my listener's minds with all the weirdness I have discovered in my reading. These are two of the most recent titles I have worked through.

 I am incredibly jealous of this book. Maybe that's a species of academic pettiness, but I desperately wish I had been smart enough to write it. Admittedly, it's about a narrow topic - the conflict between people (colonizers and colonized) and tigers in the Malay world - but it is a perfect microcosm of the information I've found about man-eating tigers in the works of Jim Corbett and other British hunters. It discusses the magic attributed to tigers by native populations and the status conferred to colonizing hunters and soldiers by tiger killing and, as most of my research does, it makes me wish to stretch back through time and offer protection to those big and beautiful cats who fell before the thunder of guns. I realize that sentiment isn't becoming to the world of research, but I can't write without passion and I can't help but feel for the slain tigers and the genes removed forever from the world. The Victorians have a great deal to answer for when it comes to the present condition of the wild and we, their heirs, aren't doing much better...

Before you go any further, stop and read The Man-eaters of Tsavo by John Henry Patterson if you have not done so. Or, better yet, save it for a Halloween night with just a few lights on; it's pure armchair exhilaration as the lithe Patterson goes booted toes to paw with the lions impeding the progress of the British Empire.

[I sense your disapproval that I seem to be on the side of the man-eating cats here, but, to paraphrase Monty Python, "What's the British Empire ever done for us? Also, as a three year old I chanted, "Kill the cats!" at a screening of The Aristocats and had to be taken out of the theater, so I have some atoning to do. And just to clarify what seems like young bloodlust, my logic was that cats didn't need money, while the butler clearly did.]

Caputo's trek back through history is an admirable one. He has a poetic appreciation for the African landscape, guides the reader through scientific debates about lion manes (or mane-less-ness), and reminded me that though I haven't seen big cats yet, there is still time (he was 60 at the time of his adventures). In sum, a fine companion book once you've finished Patterson, guaranteed to add to one's knowledge of these specific man-eaters.