Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 60, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 March 1910 — Cats Human Food. [ARTICLE]

Cats Human Food.

The Brussels correspondent of the New York Herald (Paris edition) notes that in Brussels cat is considered a delicious food in some classes. Workmen in breweries fatten cats and turn them into a stew. Edward Topsel, who wrote learnedly about the cat—his "History of Four-footed Beasts,” was published In 1607 —was of the opinion that the flesh of cats can seldom be free from poison, “by reason of their daily food, eating rats and mice, wrens-and other birds which feed on poison, and above all the brain of a cat: is most poisonous, for it being above measure dry, stoppeth the animal spirits, that they cannot pass into the ventricle, by reason whereof memory faileth, and the infected person faileth into a Phrenzie.” But Topsel was prejudiced against the cat. The people of Savu, who lived the natural life when Capt. Cook visited them, preferred cats to sheep and goats. In .Germany many a cat has been sold for hare, and jugged cat has been relished there by foreign sojourners. The handsome daughter of a landlady far up in the Canton Vaud told us as a matter of course that when the snow was deep and communication was cut off, they ail ate cats.