How about we toss some cats out there with rabies? Eventually, one will scratch the tiger, and then we just have to wait!
Really, what would possibly go wrong?
I don’t think any number of cats could take a tiger. The Tiger’s hide is probably too thick for a house cat to do any real amount of damage, and a Tiger would be much faster than the cats in terms of escaping after he’s eaten/killed a few dozen of them. Basically assuming they swarmed like army ants or something, I’d say several hundred at least.
First bathe tiger in catnip and cover with Fancy Fest.
Just judging by my cats–they are lazy. If they saw a tiger, they would not even try to take it. They’d run.
On the other hand, we recently had to take the older cat to the vet. The breakdown was thus:
ROUND 1. 7-pound spayed female feline vs. 130-pound adult human female.
Goal: Get cat into cat carrier
Result: FAIL
Cat:1, zero damage
Human: 0, 7 minor scratches
Cat now in hiding
ROUND 2. 7-pound SFF vs. 90-lb. adolescent human male
Goal: Find cat, extricate from hiding place
Result: SUCCESS
Cat: 1, zero damage
Human: 1, 4 scratches, one on knee(?)
ROUND 3. 7-pound spayed female feline vs. 210-lb. adult human male
Goal: Get cat into cat carrier
Result: SUCCESS
Cat: 1, zero damage
Human: 1, 1 minor scratch, cat hair in mouth and moustache(?)
Cat now successfully taken to vet.
Oddly enough, when the vet is done with her, she strolls back into the carrier with no problem whatsoever.
I don’t think a tiger could get her into that cat carrier. I don’t think the tiger could even catch her, considering her hiding place.
She is 7 pounds of fighting fury. There’s a reason house cats are small.
Hundreds, perhaps over a thousand, but eventually they could do it. Each would scrape away only a little, but eventually they’d just . . . erode the tiger to death. And once it’s skin is gone it won’t fight very well.
You don’t need to freeze and sharpen them if they are going fast enough. * warms up Relativistic Cat Cannon *
You’d have to put fins on the cat for a stable trajectory. Or rifle the Cat Cannon.
On what continent would this hypothetical combat take place?
One. If the tiger chokes on it.
Africa.
“A tiger? In Africa?”
“Ah. Well, it — um, it probably escaped from a zoo.”
“Doesn’t seem very likely to me.”
Australia. That way if things get out of hand and we have to nuke it, nothing of value will be lost.
The question can be construed as “How many creatures physically identical to cats–in every respect other than their neural structure–would it take to kill a tiger? Assume the only difference in neural structure is that difference required to make the cats willing to fight the tiger as a pack. Any such difference counts as a valid differene for the purpose of this question.”
-FrL-
Not Australia ,any animal that goes there becomes poisonous.
And that’s not even taking the DR into account: even on a natural twenty I don’t think a cat can overcome a tiger’s DR.
Of course, if you have enough cats, you start talking swarm rules, which changes everything . . .
Find four very large, aggressive cats, breed, pick out largest, most aggressive offspring (also try to breed ones that seem to possess more pack-like instincts if you can) of both sets and breed. Rinse and repeat. After a good amount of this you should have a cat directly related to the housecat that can take down a tiger, or if you’ve been keeping up with pack/pride instincts stop it short and hit them with two or three. Depending on how you look at it, it would either take one cat or somewhere in the hundreds or thousands.
WARNING: THIS METHOD MAY NOT WORK BY THE TIME YOUR LIFE IS OVER.
What? My school, children’s shows, and family always taught me to think outside the box.
Just a WAG, but I would say that 20 to 30 ought to be able to scratch the tiger badly enough that it will bleed to death or die from infection.
I’d say 350-400 in an inverted wedge formation should do the trick.
“Alba gu bra”!!
-LC
I believe that Africa would give the cats a significant edge, as they are carriers of trypanosomiasis (or “sleeping sickness”), a blood parasite that is fatal to tigers. By spacing out their attacks over months or years, it would probably only take 4 or 5 cats to defeat a single tiger (assuming that 20% of feral African cats are carriers for the disease, which I suspect is probably a low estimate throughout most sub-Saharan nations).
Australia would probably more closely favor the tiger, especially in the coastal provinces where its strong swimming ability would lend it greater maneuverability. Native Australian fauna, such as saltwater crocs and venomous snakes, would likely prove a limited hindrance to the Bengal tiger, whose native environment also boasts these creatures in abundance. The larger Siberian tiger might be at a slightly greater metabolic disadvantage due to its lower surface-to-volume ratio.
If we assume an average weight for the domestic cat of 8.5 kg, and an average weight for the Bengal tiger of 440 kg, we may therefore calculate that it would require a minimum collective effort of 51.76 cats to physically overwhelm a tiger. However, the tiger has the advantage in overall speed and agility, being able to reach a speed of 60 kph, leap 4 meters straight up and 11 meters at a bound, whereas the domestic cat is barely able to haul its own bloated carcass from the windowsill to the food dish, on a good day with the wind at its back.
Relative intelligence is also a significant factor. The tiger has a brain mass of appx. 270 gm, roughly equivalent to other large land carnivores such as the lion or grizzly bear. By contrast, the domestic cat has a raisin-like concretion of inert wax in place of a brain, slightly warmed by body heat and bacterial decay of its outer layer of organic compost. Some scientists hypothesize that the cat’s body is actually directed by a smaller “hind-brain” made of its own feces.
What is the most intelligent animal that each species preys on? The tiger is a carnivore whose most intelligent prey may include highly social mammals such as elephants (for the Bengal, though likely only the young or ill) and orangoutans (for the Sumatran). By contrast, the domestic cat is a parasite whose most intelligent prey is a tin of Friskies. Both species also prey on humans, although the tiger is limited to preying on humans insane enough to live in the same area as tigers. However, cats are only capable of preying on people insane enough to feed and shelter cats at their own expense. So it may actually be a draw in this regard. Both species are likely capable of preying on Australians.
So how many cats would it take to defeat a tiger? We know that the collective action of many small animals can swiftly overwhelm a single large creature; for example, a school of piranhas can strip a cow to the bone in minutes. Tigers, of course, will also eat cows. But piranhas are fish, and cats eat fish. Therefore, the set of all cats that eat cows necessarily includes the set of all cats that eat fish. However, experiments have proven that piranhas will also eat cats. Therefore, (piranhas > tigers > cows > Australians > feces > cats). As fish, piranhas travel in schools. If an Australian school contains 600 students on average, each of whom produce 1.0 kg of feces per day, we arrive at a minimum required total of 70.6 cats per cow, or 141.7 pirahnas per tiger.
But pirahnas are native to South America, not Australia! Therefore we must substitute the feces of the saltwater crocodile, which works out to 50.4 students per feces per week, or 212.8 Australians per cow, or -121.0 cats per tiger. The poikilothermy of the saltwater crocodile versus metabolism of pirahna feces signifies that, in greater numbers, cats actually become progressively less capable of defeating a tiger than its own feces (the limit of equivalency being reached at 20.2 cats per tiger feces).
This is anticipated by comparative morphology, which predicts that any negative value in units of smaller cats will be topologically contiguous with the corresponding negative values in units of larger cats, when each cat is treated as a mathematically nested toroid with the smaller cat inside the larger. Therefore any number of cats may defeat any number of tigers, but only while inside them, at a ratio of 20.2 cats per tiger feces. And that’s why fire engines are red.
It’s people like you who are responsible for intellectual scourges like Alchemy and D&D. Your soothing, professoral tone had me embroiled in a lie, I was not suspicious of the rising number of jokes until it was too late and you mentionned students and feces. I hope you are proud of yourself 
Be of good cheer, my friend. Remember, if it were not for alchemy, we would not today have the science of chemistry, or enjoy the better living that was born thereof. Likewise, if it were not for D&D, we would not have online fantasy wargames like World of Warcraft. And if it were not for WoW, we would not have D&D yet again.
Who can say what tomorrow will bring? From mere acorns are sprung mighty oaks; great storms may arise unforseen from the edge of a butterfly’s wing. Perhaps your humble inquiry into the relative combat ablility of various feline species will ultimately provide the key insight that inspires all humanity to forge a global utopia based on the furry lifestyle.