Forum debate on hunting and cooking stray cats

Forum debate on hunting and cooking stray cats

A slingshot enthusiast opens the can of worms: he wants to hunt a stray cat, put it in a supermarket bag, and hide it in his backpack. The reason, he says, is "curiosity and Mad Max-style preparation." The question he poses is not whether it can be done, but how: how many days of vinegar, if the meat allows for dismemberment, and if half an hour in the oven is enough. The response he receives is an involuntary treatise on survival cooking, zoology, and public health.

The first thing that appears is the comparison with rabbit. The cat is a carnivorous feline, reminds one participant, and the rabbit is herbivorous: they are not interchangeable. Several messages insist that the meat is dry and fibrous, more similar to hare than farm rabbit. Hence the most repeated recipe: marinate in wine for a couple of nights, cook slowly with potatoes, carrots, and onions, or season with garlic and parsley and bake 40 minutes at 185 degrees with roasted potatoes underneath.

The problem is not the recipe, it's the animal

The discussion turns sour when someone asks about diseases. Stray cats eat rats, mice, cockroaches, and birds, drink from puddles, and rummage through trash bins. One participant recounts that a relative hunted a wild rabbit, cleaned it, stewed it, and the whole family felt ill for several days. The argument is reinforced by the memory of mad cow disease: feeding herbivores with animal meal ended as it did. The conclusion that prevails is that a street predator accumulates parasites that a farmed herbivore does not have.

Some respond that farm pigs are not exactly models of hygiene either and that in extreme situations it would suffice to discard offal, check the liver, and cook thoroughly. The counterargument is blunt: pigs are under veterinary control, cats are not.

The cat eaten in Peru and the one eaten after the war

The conversation shifts toward actual consumption. One participant claims to have tried roast cat and warns that it does not taste good and that the liver and kidneys are toxic due to accumulated substances. Another points to Peru: in the provinces of Pomabamba and Huari, in Áncash, it is traditional to eat "mishi" in dishes that would normally contain guinea pig (cuy). In Segarro, adds a third, it is made in a stew pot.

Family memory also appears. A participant recalls his grandfather's stories about the post-war period, when more than one family ate cat and did not die from it. Another retrieves an old cookbook that orders the cat to be bled, its head cut off and thrown away "because it is not for eating," roast the body underground for a day and a night, and beat it with a switch while roasting. The warning about the brains—"eating the brains could cause the eater to lose their mind and judgment"—has today a more prosaic reading: prions.

How to kill it matters more than how to cook it

The strongest consensus in the exchange is not in the kitchen, but in the slaughter. Stress hormones worsen the flavor, and an animal that spends hours in a snare and dies by axe blows needs 48 hours of marinade to be edible. Hence the recommendation to use a cage trap instead of a slingshot: blows and cuts ruin the meat. There is also insistence on skinning it well and cleaning it thoroughly, because without marinating "it will smell terrible and have an unbearable cat flavor."

The legal aspect remains unresolved: one participant recalls that hunting cats is prohibited, unless the animal has no owner. No one provides the specific regulation. And the underlying doubt remains unanswered: if the taste is bad, if the meat is tough, and if the health risk is real, the Mad Max-style curiosity stays, for now, theoretical.