The tiger is beautiful, solitary danger. Being chased by one is read as a formidable force in pursuit — in the East power and peril in one striped body, in the West passionate, feminine-coded ferocity denied and now following, in Ibn Sirin's tradition an insolent enemy or tyrant on your track.
Three readings
In Chinese tradition · 周公解梦
In the Chinese frame the tiger is 虎 — power, courage, and danger in a single animal, king of the mountain as the dragon is of the sky. Its pursuit reads as a mighty matter on your track: a rival of real force, a risk taken now taking interest in you, or authority displeased. Yet the tradition honors the tiger-dreamer: to face or subdue it reads toward courage rewarded and standing won. What is chasing you is worth respecting — and might be worth turning to face.
Where the lion is sovereign and public, the tiger is passionate and solitary — Jung's bestiary reads it near devouring intensity: rage, desire, or ferocity that was denied its place and now follows its owner. The chase is the classic pursuit-grammar: what you run from is yours. A tiger specifically asks about the beautiful dangerous thing — the passion or anger too elegant to be ugly and too fierce to be safe — that you have been declining to own.
Ibn Sirin read the tiger as an insolent, tyrannical enemy — danger with pride in it — and its pursuit as such a force seeking you. To escape reads as safety; to overcome it, victory over an arrogant opposition; its skin or bones, spoils from that victory. As meaning: something proud and dangerous — a person, a temptation, a temper — has your scent; the dream asks whether to outpace it or end the chase by turning.
Escape reads as safety from a formidable force — this time. As with all chase dreams, recurrence asks for the turn: pursued things in dreams tend to shrink or transform when faced.
Tiger versus lion — does it matter which chases me?
The traditions think so: the lion is public, sovereign power — bosses, institutions; the tiger is solitary, passionate danger — a rival, a temptation, your own ferocity. Which cat came says which force is loose.
What if the tiger is caged or calm?
Contained, the tiger reads as power mastered or danger held in check — sometimes your own intensity, disciplined. A calm tiger walking beside you is among the strongest images of ferocity befriended.
This is the general reading. Your dream is specific.