This brought a smile to my face.

RAI, the public broadcasting network, said that it had dropped Beppe Bigazzi, 77, for offering the recipe on La Prova del Cuoco, which is broadcast at midday on the main channel. Its switchboard was inundated with complaints from viewers and animal rights groups. Bigazzi said that casserole of cat was a famous dish in his home region of Valdarno, Tuscany.

“I’ve eaten it myself and it’s a lot better than many other animals,” he told viewers. “Better than chicken, rabbit or pigeon.” He said that for optimum flavour the meat should be “soaked in spring water for three days” before being stewed.

Disclosure: I have three cats, only one of which I am tempted to eat [he has many annoying habits that we can't seem to break him of...].

Our politically-correct western societies have no trouble referring to any believer in the divine as 'religious fanatic', as if the faithful were somehow a unique and monolithic repository for the mental illness of fanaticism. Yet sighting a true religious fanatic is like seeing a unicorn prancing through a corn field--a remarkable and rare event. On the other hand, the witch-burning left is all around us like a plague of zombies.

Dogs and cats are quite edible, as coyotes in Los Angeles will attest to. To this day, rabbits sold in French meat markets are skinned with the exception of their furry paws, to allow consumers to be assured that they aren't being sold cat for rabbit. The French also enjoy a good meal of horse, which has a slight gamy taste, but is otherwise quite tasty.

The moral outrage at cat-eating is indefensible. Certainly no one is forcing you to eat Fluffy, but judging from the number of strays dumped in my neighborhood by people tired of their pets, perhaps eating them should be consider more humane than letting them starve, freeze to death or be ripped apart by local predators.