Cat hair covers Irving's coat (7)
I believe the answer is:
tigress
'cat' is the definition.
(I know that tigress is a type of Panthera tigris)
'hair covers irving's coat' is the wordplay.
'hair' becomes 'tress' (tress is a kind of hair).
'covers' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'coat' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters) (only the letters which coat the word are used).
'irving' with its middle taken out is 'ig'.
'tress' enclosing 'ig' is 'TIGRESS'.
(Other definitions for tigress that I've seen before include "Passionate woman" , "Wild woman" , "hunting animal" , "Wild cat (female)" , "Female big cat" .)