The Jungle Book man

The British author Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his poetry, but he is probably best remembered for The Jungle Book, which features several big cat characters, such as the panther Bagheera and the fierce tiger Shere Khan.

He also wrote the wonderful story “The Cat Who Walked by Himself,” in which Man and Woman tame all manner of animals but don’t quite succeed in taming the cat. The cat finally agrees to live in the humans’ house and catch mice, but he is never completely tamed. He is “the cat who walks by himself.” As you might expect, Kipling was very fond of cats.