Hmmm…well, then I withdraw my previous comment (except to the extent that it applies to Stiles).
Although, while I won’t be morally hypocritica, and say eating cat is fundementally different that eating cow, I will probably continue to be emtionally hypocritical and say I don’t want to see an ickle bickle widdle kitty cat cut up and barbequed.
I feel the same way betenoir - I sure don’t want to see cats cut up and killed. I’m also not really big on seeing cows killed - but then I like my cats more than is really rational for a human, so kittykabobs would bother me more. That said, I don’t think there is anything wrong with people eating domestic felines - although it would be disturbing, I think, if the cat had been a pet beforehand. The method described of killing it is about as humane as it gets - when I was in High School, I watched a CBC/BBC production on food in the Far East, and it showed a meat marketeer grabbing a beautiful, fluffy white cat with a catch pole, dragging around while it was being strangled, dunking it into scalding water to remove the fur (then stripping the fur off by hand) and it was conscious and moving during all of this. A couple of quick blows and decapitiation is merciful by comparison. (All this is off the top of my head years later - I may have missed something, but I remember what I’ve listed quite clearly.)
I didn’t watch much more of that production, I think. I do remember beetles and snake meats being offered for sale as well.
Venoma, I know which one you’re talking about. I think it was an HBO Undercover show. Just fucking awful – the skinned cat lay, very much alive, stunned and dying – on its side in the scalding oil. That’s something I’ve not been able to get out of my mind.
Then again, I was forced to help slaughter cattle one summer when I was a child. Not to mention the hundreds of chickens I helped decapitate by stepping on the heads and pulling on the feet. It’s not just some “delicious food on a styrofoam tray wrapped in Saran.”
Sheesh, I remember the flap over this when it was new. Congratulations on being outraged two years too late.
Some aboriginal australians eat cats. In Australia, cats have spread right across the continent, even in the middle of the desert. I remember seeing a doco on cable tv where there was a ranger type person with some aborigines and they went cat hunting. Needless to say, the aborigines got their food, and the ranger got to examine what the cat had eaten (pretty much everything from bugs to mice to birds to lizards in case you were wondering). Mind you, this is in the middle of the desert keep in mind, and the aborigines were just smart - if you hunted for your food it’d probably be wise to eat the most common edible animal out there.
Eating animals is a very culturally influenced act. Depending on which culture you are from, eating a cat, or a cow, or a snail, could be considered offensive.
Not to mention that the aborigines were doing the natural environment a favour, because the presence of so many feral cats in an ecosystem without many other predators has wreaked havoc on the unique Australian wildlife. Anyone who owns cats in Australia, and who doesn’t have them neutered or spayed, is totally fucking irresponsible, in my opinion.