My first instinct is “bullshit”. This person has not been particularily intellectually honest in the past, on topics from Saddam to Snopes.
However, I suppose it’s possible. I would imagine that the story, if true, has been embellished a bit (i.e. I’d be surprised if the cat ate all of the bones). Marrow may be tasty, but that doesn’t mean you need to eat the whole skeleton. And what’s with leaving the ears, which have to be tastier than chewed bone.
Anybody have a (GQ) answer to this? Specifically:
Have you seen/heard this as an Urban Legend before?
Assuming not,
Do cats sometimes kill other weaker (and/or new) pets? This cat lives (or lived?) in a Scottish urban environment.
Will cats “trophy eat” (made-up phrase, but presumably this cat had been fed in the past 48 hours so it shouldn’t have been desperate for food).
Do cats eat the skeletons (inc. skulls) of their prey?
Assuming yes,
Is a chiwawa’s skeleton of the sort that they might eat (i.e. is it as fragile as bird bones).
I know that the chances of someone being able to answer all of these questions is minimal. Unless it happened to you too .
The average weight of a chihuahua is between 2 and 6 pounds.
I highly doubt a housecat - even a big one - could eat 2-6 pounds of food at one sitting, let alone food that contains a goodly amount of fur, bones, and teeth.
Unless . . . the dog was really A Mexican Rat!!! My friend’s brother’s barber’s third cousin’s housekeeper had that happen to her! And boy was it scary!
Yes, cats kill smaller and weaker animals. My cat has killed various rodents, the occasional bird, and a snake, that I know of. Tomcats will kill kittens. Cats will also attack new pets, and if the new pet is small enough and weak enough and the cat is aggressive enough, it could be killed. It’s not unbelievable that a cat could kill a chihuahua if it really wanted to, especially if we’re talking about a pup. I guess the cat might even conceivably take a bite or two out of the soft tissues.
The rest of the story, though? Crap. Complete crap. While cats tend to be gorgers (eat a whole lot, then don’t eat for a while) and will often eat most of a bird or mouse, they probably wouldn’t eat that much. Even if the cat would eat that much, he wouldn’t eat the skeleton. Crack the bones if possible to get the marrow out, yes. Eat the whole bone, no. And if he were to eat the bones, why would he leave out the ears and those tasty paws? Lots of cartilaginous and bone-y goodness there.
As to my failure to pick up on chihuahua, I can recommend that people not use Google as a quick spell-checker. How was I to know that www.chiwawafanclub.com was for a band .
Thanks for the answers. Seems to be either a case of extreme exaggeration or just plain BS.
Cats will eat bones, although I doubt from something as large as a chihuahua. Back when I had a cat flap, my first cat would often bring home takeout. I once came home to find enough feathers in the kitchen to fill a small pillow. But nothing else. I’ve also seen the same cat eat rodents whole. In case you’re wondering, the tail goes last. And yes, the cat was regularly fed, so it didn’t * have * to be hunting – she was just very, very good at it.
Aside from the "nothing left but the paws and ears" part, there's nothing particular incredible about the story. No reason I can think of why a 12-16 lb housecat couldn't take down a 2-6 pound dog.
I don’t believe it either, but I can’t add to what prior posters said.
Usually when someone is posting BS, they have some purpose: to give people the creepy-crawlies; to prove cats are evil; to prove dogs are helpless in the presence of cats; and so forth.
What discussion was going on when this guy posted the Eaten Chihuaua Story?
Just yesterday, I saw a guy walking this tiny little chihuahua; it couldn’t have been any bigger than a six-month-old kitten. I’d put my parents’ cat up against that dog any day
When I was a teenager, a neighbor’s cat killed another neighbor’s Mexican Hairless dog. The cat didn’t eat the dog, though.
I’m sure it was self-defense. The cat was aquitted.
So not only did the cat supposedly eat the entire dog (except paws and ears) but it also opened doors?
I agree with what’s been said, a cat could conceivably kill a small dog but it’s doubtful it would eat that much of it. I think it would definitely leave the entire skull, even though chihuahua’s don’t have much for brains and usually have open fontanelles (holes in their heads), I think the skull would be too much to chew through or eat whole.
Kill, yes. When I was in 5th grade our 6 1/2 pound cat put a collie into veterinary intensive care without much effort. A cat’s not going to come out the winner in every scrap by any means, but I’d believe at least a rare predatory killing on the part of a kitty for any critter smaller than a pig.
Eat, minus paws and ears?
::stares at our non-svelte 12-pound Itidarod-model defensive-linebacker chihuahua::
Hmmm, even I couldn’t eat that, but they do come as small as just under two pounds. Assuming a very very small chihuahua, I suppose it’s possible foodquantity-wise, but…
Old kitty once ate the majority of a squirrel, but the parts they leave (and they nearly always do leave a respectful offering to The Human, btw) tend to be the head and the entrails in particular, usually also tail, and usually there’d be huge clumps and scraps of fur and bone as well (cats aren’t very furnivorous and they don’t tend to chew and gnaw and crack bones as dogs do, either). Field mousies, chipmunks, whatever, I’ve always been “gifted” with little trophy heads, tails, and icky ropy-soft critter-innards to clean up after telling Kitty what a good and noble and mighty hunter he is.
Darnit! I was toying with making a thread about that story and I missed the opportunity to use it in my own post!
BTW, since you live in the UK, is a lurcher the same thing as a greyhound? Because that looks like a greyhound to me.
To contradict my own post I have actually known of instances of cats opening doors. I saw a video of a cat that could open a door with a pull-down handle (not sure of the technical name of those). He’d just jump up and grab it and it would open. Also, I have a cat that could open a round doorknob, but it required a couple things. There had to be a table near the doorknob so he could be on the same level as the knob, and the door didn’t latch very securely so a little twist of the paws could pop it open. He used both paws on the doorknob and he seemed to know what he was doing. By an odd coincidence, this door led to the room where the dogs stayed … but he never ate them. They were golden retrievers so I think becoming cat food was even less likely for them.
Despite refuting my own post, I still think the cat eating the chihuahua story is bullshit.
Sorry. Posted this last night, but it didn’t take.
You’re right about the Greyhound thing. Lurchers appear to be a type of mix rather than a breed, with pretty much anything containing greyhound qualifying. Another link.
.
.