I know there are cultures where dog is a delicacy but I have never heard of cats being considered a desirable food source. Are there any cultures where cats are considered good eatin’?
If this is the case has any doper eaten cat(s) and what do they taste like?
Desert Aboriginals considered (and in some cases still consider) cat to be exceptioanlly good eating. These animals spread into the drier regions of Australia before Europeans and were well and truly on the menu when the first European settlers arrived. Interestingly they were considered an animals of eveil even to the Aboriginals with no European contact.
Just proves my theory that cats really are a tool of the devil.
I have seen skinned cats hanging for sale on the streets of southern China (as well as snakes, scorpions and a host of other creatures you do not want to know). If you are ever in GuangZhou and would like to see this stuff, head for QingPing Lu market. It’s more like a takeaway zoo…
I have been told by my friends who lived in Guangzhou that you should only buy live animals and insist that they are butchered in front of you to insure freshness… just in case anyone was considering a jaunt down to QingPing Lu market to pick up the ingredients for a little Cataroni for their evening repast.
Most of the cats I’ve seen don’t seem like they’d yield a lot of meat. Maybe that helps explain why I’ve often heard people say that, with Chinese food, an hour later they’re hungry again.
>> I have been told by my friends who lived in Guangzhou that you should only buy live animals and insist that they are butchered in front of you to insure freshness
That is quite true. They would not dream of buying a dead fish and consider strange that we do. They line the bed of small trucks with tarps, fill them with water and transport the fish to market. Other animals are kept in cages and the whole thing is quite revolting for westerners with more delicate sensibilities. The animals are kept in cages where they cannot move. Chickens are debeaked so they do not peck eack other. A snake would be skinned alive in front of you and it is still wriggling as the skin comes off. You see monkeys rattling their cages…
The Chinese seem to have no concept of kindness to animals and you see kids hassling the poor animals just for the fun. I have noticed it is like a reflex and even grown ups have the instinct to harass animals. Twice in DC I have had Chinese friends shoo away pigeons or squirrels or whatever, just for fun and they did not like it when I told them we do not do that here.
Restaurants in GuangZhou have also all the animals in cages and the fish in tanks and you select whetever you want and they butcher it right then and there.
I think a major factor in all this is that refrigeration was virtually unknown until very recently. That also might explain why milk is not part of Chinese diet.
I have found it interesting that the Chinese people seem to have no compassion for animals and find cruelty a natural thing. They mistreat them just for the heck of it. And yet, on several ocassions I have emailed photos to my Chinese friends of certain things and they told me they cringed and had to close them immediately as they could not look at them. The latest example was the photo of a baby with a pacifier that had teeth painted on it. It was mentioned in another thread but I don’t remember which. Anyway, it was odd looking but I do not understand how somebody would be scared of looking at it and yet three different women were annoyed and told me not to sent them this. Other instances I remember were a photo of a hairy caterpillar (!) and a picture of a mouse (?). I don’t get it.
And getting back to the OP, I have heard that eating a cat would be similar to eating a rabbit or a hare.
Eating a pussy… that’s something else altogether and there’s no better place than China… 
I haven’t been to Guangzhou for a while, but the dogs were the ones skinned and on meathooks, while the cats were live for the fresh factor.
I would also point out that kitty cuisine is not I repeat not an universal Chinese thing. Popular in real southern China (Guangdong aka Canton Province, and Guangxi). These two provinces also border Viet Nam and I have heard but no personal experience to substantiate that the Viet Namese also enjoy felines. No doubt cats get eaten throughout China, but it is not part of the normal cuisine. I’ve travelled all over southwest China and live in Shanghai, and with the exception of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces, I’ve never seen cats for sale as food.
Cat, it’s what’s for dinner,
a page in French,
scroll down for the animals,
turtles
The cat meat trade in China,
it was my understanding that though they do eat cats - cats are not the prefered meat. More like what you can catch when the 'roo gets away.
I’m sure there’s plenty of places that cats get eaten as and when available.
It may be (just a WAG mind) that raising cats en masse for food is not so easy. Cats aren’t the most social animals and generally you want your food animals to have a herd/pack instinct so that many can be raised in a smallish area.
Herding cats is however an amusing mental picture. 
Everything I’ve seen says that Aboriginals who did eat cat consider it to be somewhat of a delicacy because its dry flesh is such a contrast to the fairly oily flesh of most other animals available.
Modern Aboriginals of course only rely on bush tucker very occasionally if ever. As such they’re like everyone else and pretty much of the crocodile Dundee opinion. You can eat it, but it tastes like shit.
God knows how restaurants get away with selling emu or 'roo when you can get a grain-fed steak.
The current issue of FORTEAN TIMES’ cover story is actually called “The Cat Eaters.” Although the article is mostly about weird cases of gluttony in the 1700s.
hissssssssss…
it’s people like those cat-sellers that force me to stay indoors… in taiwan, fortunately, they are few. you almost never see any weird animals to be sold for consuming (except for this one snake-soup store, really weird place in a bad part of town…) 
poor snakies…
I saw a documentary on Channel 4, UK, the other day about British POWs in Colditz.
They got so hungry one of them ate the cat they had.
He said it was terribly greasy and not very nice but better than starving to death.
Then Taiwan has cleaned up a lot. Okay, Hwa Shi Jie (sorry, my Taiwan pinyin is rusty) or Snake Alley has snakes and sometimes mongoose for sale. I remember quite a few “wild game restaurants” that did really disgusting things like sell a single leg of deer, and then go whack it off of a live deer in a tiny cage out back. I would be gladened if that is a thing of the past.
But yep, even in the 1980’s I’m not sure if you could find cat in Taiwan. Dog was no problem, but I never saw cat.
ALF!! OH, AAAALLLLFFF! DINNER TIME! GET YER CATS WHILE THEY’RE HOT!
I believe that during the Seige of Paris (1870?), not only did the locals eat the entire content of the zoo (presumably except the spiders/very toxic creatures<1>),but there was also a thriving market in “Roof Rabbit”, to you and me, that’s cat, unfortunately, I don’t have any accounts to hand, but one of the diarys of the seige might give some details.
Regards
Walrus
<1> but with the French, you never can tell
Lots of people do. You’ve never shooed away a bothersome pigeon trying to mooch your sandwich? I sure have. This is, of course, not to say that we should purposely abuse pigeons and squirrels just for kicks, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t shoo them away when they’re a nuisance (which is just about always). Or did you mean that your Chinese friends would actually abuse the critters, rather than just shoo them?
It’s taken almost 12 years, but I have managed to come up with an update: 90 cats saved from the pot
Here in Thailand, in Nakhon Phanom province. That’s in the Northeast and on the border with Laos. Excerpt: “A pickup truck carrying 90 cats believed to be headed for restaurants in Vietnam serving exotic dishes was stopped near the Laos border and the driver arrested, police said.” As you can see from the Wikipedia entry for Nakhon Phanom, from there it’s just a short jog over to Vietnam, and there is a lot of overland traffic to and from there nowadays.
The driver had apparently done this before. Said he had been paid 2000-3000 baht per trip, which in American money works out to between $64 and $96 at the current exchange rate and is up to 10 days’ pay based on the minimum wage for labor.
Isn’t there an episode of “The Office” where someone proposes this kind of thing, only with cows and pigs?
