All the tiger taken out.

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"All the tiger taken out" first appears in Only The Cows Go Moo when the protagonist, Chris, is disturbed by the behaviour of a cow in a cow shed and calls to mind a tiger he had once seen in a zoo.

The phrase recurs throughout the story, to illustrate a devastating loss of self.

There was a terrible din coming from a cow shed further along the road. It sounded like this:

‘Moo.’

Bang!

‘Moo.’

Bang!

And so on.

He stood by one of the two enormous sheet aluminium gates to the cow shed. His bicycle lay on the floor beside him. Holly peered over his shoulder nervously.

‘Moo.’

Bang!

The gate rattled on its hinges. It was deafening. There was a small four inch square opening that allowed access to the mechanism that opened and closed the gate. Chris leaned forward and looked through it. The smell was overwhelming.

He saw three cows. They were all brown. One cow was directly behind the gate. The other two were some distance away, but looking in his direction. As Chris looked on, the cow nearest to him mooed and hurled itself bodily at the gate.

Bang!

Holly shot upwards like a rocket and Chris fell backwards onto his bicycle.

Back on his feet, he peered through the opening once again.

‘Moo.’

Bang!

Chris had not the foggiest notion of the cow’s motivation for the behaviour. He remembered a trip to the zoo when he was five. A tiger was pacing back and forth, back and forth. It was pacing a short run inside an enclosure that might have been more suitable for housing a pair of rabbits. It was the most pitiable animal he had ever seen. You could tell it was a tiger. It was the right shape. The right colour. The right size. It was, without question, a tiger. It was entirely true that it was and entirely true that it wasn’t. It was a tiger with all the tiger taken out. You need human beings to achieve such a thing as that.

Ciao ciao for now now,

Dog ♥