Eating Cats

Despite having two cats as pets, I don't feel particularly strongly one way or the other about this:

Australians have come up with a novel solution to the millions of feral cats roaming the outback - eat them.

The felines are the descendants of domestic pets and kill millions of small native animals each year.

A recent Alice Springs contest featured wild cat casserole. The meat is said to taste like a cross between rabbit and, perhaps inevitably, chicken.

But wildlife campaigners have expressed their dismay that Australia's wild cat now finds itself on the nation's menus.

Feral cats are one of the most serious threats to Australia's native fauna.

They eat almost anything that moves, including small marsupials, lizards, birds and spiders.

I'd never eat cat myself, mind you. I don't think that's purely an emotive issue to do with cuddliness and so on: there seems to me something in general not quite right about eating carnivores. Cows, sheep, pigs, chickens, all just one step up the food chain from plants - not a problem. Cats and dogs, never.

Are there are good health reasons for that prejudice, I wonder? The finding that the BSE outbreak was caused by feeding meat and bonemeal to cattle suggests there might be.

Comments

[dearieme]

Lobsters.

[Mick H]

Lobsters? Is that all you have to say?

Anyway, all rules are off in the sea. It's a different world down there.

[DaninVan]

Go vegan; eat sea cucumbers...;)
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Holothuroidea.html

[fridgemonkey]

I read many years ago that cat meat tasted terrible -"pissy' was the precise term used. I'm interested to see that might not be the case.

Mind you I'm not going to be eating anything I'm allergic to.

[Fabian from Israel]

Carnivores are not kosher. Welcome to the tribe.

[Jim Miller]

Do you eat fish? Practically all of those sold commercially are carnivores.

[Jim Miller]

Oh, and there is one well known danger from eating carnivores: Many of them have livers with such high levels of Vitamin A that you should skip that delicacy. As I recall Vitamin A poisoning got some explorers in both the Arctic and Antarctic.

[kat]

I hope it is very poisonous.

[Vagabondblogger]

I'm a dog person, but I've been feeding the feral cats here in Cairo. I wouldn't eat them though. On the other hand Aussies eat all sorts of other weird things that I wouldn't put on my plate either.

[hanmeng]

The omnivorous pig can adapt to either a carnivorous or a herbivorous diet.