Einstein’s Cat Tiger: Why He Was Sad When It Rained, and the Story of the Famous Portrait
Few people know that in Princeton Albert Einstein had a cat named Tiger, who fell into real gloom whenever it rained outside. The mathematician Ernst Straus, Einstein’s assistant and friend, recalled how on one such day Einstein said to the cat sympathetically: “I know what’s wrong, dear fellow, but I don’t know how to turn it off.”
Tiger and the rainy days in Princeton
From 1935 Einstein lived at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton and worked at the Institute for Advanced Study. Tiger the cat lived there too, and bad weather completely ruined his mood.
The story about “turning off” the rain was told by Ernst Straus, a young mathematician who was Einstein’s assistant from 1944 to 1948. It’s thanks to his recollections that we know how warmly the great physicist treated his cat.
Einstein’s other pets
Tiger wasn’t the only animal in the scientist’s Princeton home:
- Chico the fox terrier — a wire-haired dog Einstein joked about: “The dog is very smart. He feels sorry for me because I receive so much mail; that’s why he tries to bite the mailman.”
- Bibo the parrot — a gift for Einstein’s 75th birthday in 1954. The scientist thought the bird seemed sad and tried to cheer it up by telling it jokes.
Who drew Einstein with the cat
It isn’t a photograph but a drawing. Its author is the German illustrator Michael Mathias Prechtl (1926–2003). He was known for his Der Spiegel covers and illustrations of the classics, and he loved drawing cats: for E. T. A. Hoffmann’s novel “The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr”, for example, he created a whole “Gallery of Famous Cats”.
What a warm story about a genius who could explain how the universe works but couldn’t turn off the rain for his cat 