Eating Cats in the Trenches

[bruce]

Many people may have eaten cat unknowingly. Cat tastes very much like rabbit and with the head, paws and skin removed is almost indistinguishable. There was a case in Romford market in the 50's/60's of a trader passing off cat as rabbit.

This is the first thread to make me feel sick!

My Mum occasionally bought her meat in the market....in the 40's and 60's....

Does that mean i could have eaten..........

Blewch!!!

Bruce

[franzmaximilian]

Preamble: I am a cat lover and my cat is sitting next to me just now, but I have no dobts that killing a human being is far more disgusting than eating a cat (dog, horse).

I think that very few who contributed to this thread ever heard first hand accounts of real starvation. Remember the account on prices of cat meat in one of the first posts in this thread? Well, while reading it I really thought it was about meat "from" cats on the black market.

You will hardly find a written account of a cat being eaten in difficult times (say Italy in winter 1944-45), but everybody who lived in that period will confirm that no feral cats could be seen around. Cat as meat is surely a taboo and no one who ate a cat would ever spontanously tell you that he did. Putting it on paper is even less probable. This even in areas of the country where cats are still eaten nowdays from time to time. I believe that no accounts will ever be found in any official source. Can you imagine a cat eater (if any existed in the BEF) writing about it in a diary? Can you imagine an officier writing to his wife that he saw soldiers eating a cat? No, beacuse this would have upset her more than reading of a friend killed by a bullet next to him.

Horse (and donkey) is not a taboo in many parts of Europe. I have both from time to time and find them delicious. I know this may sound as a provocation to British ears, but nobody on the continent would think I am a monster because I eat meat that I can buy anywhere in town.

Killing an enemy at war is not a taboo and you will find first hand accounts describing in detail how the killing was performed, sometimes with proud or satisfaction and not only in situations of "my life or your life". And someone argues how disgusting is talking about eating cats?

[auchonvillerssomme]

If there is no food for humans then it is unlikely that cats will stick around, if you haven't been feeding them, unlikely if starving, then why would they stay they would be long gone. Rabbits are far easier to catch in the wild or farm than cats so its probably unlikely that they were really sold in markets. Personally I find horsemeat very tasty and have eaten monkey, which is fairly indifferent, and in my younger days I may have sampled a variety of animals if offered whether or not I was hungry just for the experience, but that was then and now is now eating monkey is taboo if not entirely illegal. I'm a different person today and if the ultimate question is do I respect animals more than people then the answer is in many circumstances yes.