Tiger I by Tanith Lee (Asimov’s SF, mid-December 1995) opens with a woman in a self-driving car en route to a house in the middle of the desert. When she arrives at the gate she talks to Mary Sattersley, the owner, over the intercom and gains admittance. On the short walk to the house the narrator sees a tame lynx and two tigers.
When the pair arrive the narrator and Sattersley have a drink and talk. Sattersley tells the narrator that she is pregnant and will give birth that night, and then invites her to watch. The narrator also learns that the cats on the property can’t speak but they can understand what is being said to them (as she sees when she asks the cheetah on Sattersley’s lap to open and close its eyes).
Later on, after the narrator has had a swim in the pool, the pair meet again and have dinner. The narrator hears Sattersley’s life story, which involves sexual abuse at an early age, many sexual partners during her youth, and then a tryst with an old man just before he dies. She inherited his fortune, and then learned that she was pregnant for the first time. Subequently she has given birth on several other occasions.
The final scene (spoiler) sees Sattersley deliver a tiger cub.
An odd, surreal tale that left me clueless as to what it was supposed to be about.
* (Mediocre). 4,700 words.