Automatic Tiger

Reed, Kit. "Automatic Tiger." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 26.3, whole number 154 (March 1964): 4-16. As of Nov. 2020, available on line.[1] Collected in The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2013. Frequently reprinted, for which see the Internet Speculative Fiction Database Entry linked here.[2]

See for a man's relationship with a very impressive toy (robotic) tiger and the confidence, and overconfidence, he gains from the relationship. Cf. and contrast such "toy" stories as "I Always Do What Teddy Says," "The Little Movement," Steel Justice, and the sequence in AKIRA involving "the transformation of 'teddy bears and toy cars' into 'ravenous biomechanical creatures.'"

RDE, finishing, 18Nov20