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You don’t have to be a cat lover to hate this.
September 21 — Mark the following Puruvian holiday on your calendar.
by john kass
Americans are busy hissing and scratching each other’s eyes out over presidential politics. But there is one thing we can agree on—sending a few thousand U.S. troops into Peru to occupy the nation and stop Peruvians from eating all their cats.
This villainous cat-munching takes place in the fall, when otherwise gentle and kindly Peruvians gather in the village of La Quebrada, just south of Lima, to gorge on felines. They eat fried cat and stewed cat and poached cat. Also, cats prepared with various savory local spices, such as Grilled Cat with Huacatay, the pungent and tasty Peruvian black mint.
Americans have proved we’ll accept almost anything if packaged and marketed properly. We’ve recently accepted socialism just to make Wall Street happy before an election. But if there’s one thing we won’t abide, it’s a nation of cat-eaters.
The terrible Peruvian cat-eating spree has a name: La Festival Gastronomico del Gato. Or for those of you who don’t speak Spanish—the Gastronomic Festival of the Cat.
To find out more, we contacted Nilda Pariona, who works for the regional government. Sadly, she said the mayor of the village of the cat-eaters, Alcalde Javier Alvarado Gonzales, was unavailable. But recently, she answered an e-mail, which was then translated. Here it is:
“With respect to questions relating to the Gastronomic Festival of the Cat, I can inform you that this traditional festival evolved in Canete, specifically in the La Quebrada district of San Luis. On Sept. 21 of every year, the inhabitants of the said zone celebrate this festival justly to celebrate the Fiesta de Santa Efigenia.
“They eat cat for tradition, but according to the townspeople, these are cats that come from special nurseries, they are not the cats that you’d frequently encounter in the streets. There exists a diversity of preparations: Cat Stew, Milanese of Cat, fried cat strips, grilled cat with Huacatay, among others. The most common is the cat stew. This year, they featured the dish Grilled Cat with Huacatay, but every year they present a different dish.
“The flavor is like the meat of a rabbit, and they say it’s very delicious. I particularly have not had the opportunity to sample these plates, but I hope that next year I can try them. Perhaps you could visit us and have it in the next festival. That promises to be a grand gastronomic festival. It is a pleasure to chat with you. Kindest regards, Nilda.”
This news is most unfortunate because after reading “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” a tender novel of Peruvian kindness (although the monk who investigated the bridge collapse was burned as a witch), I’ve always wanted to visit Peru. But grilled cat with local mint is not on my menu. Besides, are cats fat enough for proper grilling?
Legend has it that the cats are eaten in the hopes of promoting healthy lungs in the people. Various news reports suggest that the Gastronomic Festival of the Cat was born long ago, when slaves had little protein except cats to augment their meager diets.
Either way, the Gastronomic Festival of the Cat now honors the town’s patron saint, Saint Efigenia, and as they go about chopping their cats, the happy villagers are most likely unaware that the original Efigenia was the daughter of King Agamemnon, sacrificed by her father so favorable winds would carry his warships to the shores of Troy. Later, Efigenia’s mother paid Agamemnon back by chopping him to bits in the bathtub on the day of his glorious return.
“There isn’t much to justify our culture,” Jamie Rojas, 49, a Peruvian education worker, was quoted as saying in a wire report. “We tried to rescue the dance, the food. It is like Spain with the running of the bulls—these are our roots and can’t be forgotten.”
There are many questions too horrible to contemplate, such as: How did the Peruvians learn to herd their cats? Do they drive the fattened cat herds through town on the eve of the festival, as the villagers sing traditional cat-eating songs? And do they add fat when they grill the cats?
Predictably, this horrible behavior has angered People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a group of animal lovers growing in strength in America, where people are still fat and haven’t yet been reduced to eating their pets to survive.
“This is an easy one,” PETA spokesman Bruce Freidich said over the phone. “Contrary to what some humans think, other animals are made up of flesh and bone, they have brains and they feel pain. Future generations are going to come to view a festival centered around the consumption of animals with the same horror that they viewed our atrocities during the witch trials.”
I didn’t tell him that cats are often depicted as hanging out with witches, and unconfirmed reports from old wives suggest that cats can climb onto the chests of babies and suck out their immortal souls. When I was an infant, my grandmother’s two black Persian cats jumped into my crib and put their mouths next to my lips. But they were apprehended before they finished me off.
Cats are interesting and somewhat insolent, and though they would eat us if we were tiny creatures, we shouldn’t return the favor. America, let’s put aside our differences for once and stop the cat-eaters of Peru before another cat is mixed with Huacatay against its will.
More: reader’s dander us up via john kass, chicago tribune
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Maureen Adams
October 31st, 2008 at 3:19 pm
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