The Tiger

A specialist eye veterinarian decided that a 17-year-old Sumatran tiger, Ratna, had injured her left eye when, perhaps, it had been jabbed by a stick of bamboo in her enclosure. Sometime earlier she had had a cataract operation on the eye but in this instance, it was a first. Apparently, cataract operations on tigers are not that uncommon but it was a first to remedy a corneal ulcer and a deteriorating eye. Ratna a Sumatran tiger with corneal ulcer in her left eye. Photo: Shepreth Wildlife Park The surgeon is Dr. David Williams from the Queen's Veterinary School Hospital at the University of Cambridge. After two months of post-operation monitoring, he declared that he was delighted with the outcome and that he was able to "sign Ratna off". The eye has fully healed. Corneal surgery is not uncommon on domestic cats and dogs but it requires a lot more anaesthetic on an adult tiger, for obvious reasons. Ratna lives it Shepreth Wildlife Park near Cambridge, UK. She was move

I am dictating this using Dragon Dictate and this well-known software automatically capitalizes the word "Tiger". It always does this and, in my opinion, it is incorrect because the word "tiger" is not a proper noun. It describes the tiger generally. And therefore, it should not be capitalised. If the word "tiger" is used as part of the description of a tiger species such as "Siberian tiger" it is always in lowercase i.e. not capitalized but the word "Siberian" is a proper noun and therefore it should be capitalized. In conclusion, therefore, the word "tiger" is not capitalised normally but you will see it capitalised nonetheless. In fact, the renowned writer and zoologist, Dr. Desmond Morris, in his book Cat World always capitalizes the word "tiger" (and all the wild cat species). His book was published in 1996. It is entirely possible and plausible that the conventions regarding the capitalisation of the word &quo