Oh Lord. The Los Angeles Times has a story on the practice of eating cats in Guangzhou, China. Yeah, that's right. Eating cats: Chinese seek to pull cats from the menu. Ack, another article that's sure to draw the ire of the China haters out there. Because, let's face it—nobody wants to think about cute little kitties getting eaten.
I'm always kind of torn by stories like this. On the one hand, I always have the angry knee-jerk reaction to jokes and stereotypes about Asians cooking up cats in the back of Chinese restaurants. The insinuation is that such restaurants—and by extension, Chinese people—are inherently dirty, strange and exotic.
But in the face of articles like this, you can't deny it: they eat cats in Guangdong. And they cook 'em up good. And I'll admit, that grosses me out a little. Then again, I also have to ask, so what? How is this more or less humane or disgusting than the practice of eating any other animal? Who am I to judge?
However, as the article reports, eating cats has become increasingly socially unacceptable for many Chinese, and there's a significant movement amongst activist cat-lovers in the country to stop the cat trade in Guandong. Seems to me that there are more people who want to save the cats than eat them.
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