nimue goes:

Setting fire to a cat is wrong -- very wrong.

It dries out the meat, which has very little fat marbling, and makes
the beast almost inedible. Braising is by far the better alternative
-- slow cooking in a small amount of liquid with aromatics added.

Or stewing in beer, something that works very well with rabbit, which
has a similar structure to the cat. A dark ale is delicious, and a
fruity cherry-beer from here in Belgium adds a whole new dimension.
I'd reckon one cat per two guests at a very minimum.

HTH

I didn't at all mean I thought it was funny. I just meant that from time
to time you hear these stories about things done to cats by youngish
teenagers.

18 and 22? They seem a little old for such pranks.

This reminds me of a story that appeared in the news over here about 2
years ago when some people went into a pet shop and purchased some
gerbils. They then went to a shop that sold fireworks, brought some
rockets and asked the assistant for some rubber bands.....

I am sure I do not need to spell out what they did.....

The main thing that seemed to make this crime newsworthy was that they
were not kids but in their 20's and 30's. The assistant said that if
they'd been kids, she wouldn't have given them the rubber bands
(ignoring the fact that if they had been kids she shouldn't have sold
them the rockets)so apparentl some people seem to accept that kids are
cruel to animals but it becomes shocking when a grown up does it.

Lesley

Slave of the Fabulous Furballs

"GEORGE W. BUSH BLEW UP FROGS"

MIDLAND, Texas ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000

An alert for American voters and humane educators everywhere appeared on May 21
in the 61st through 64th paragraphs of a 76-paragraph NEW YORK TIMES feature on
the childhood of Republican candidate for U.S. president George W. Bush -- if
anyone noticed.

?One of the local rituals for children,? reported Nicholas D. Kristof of Life in
Midland, Texas, when George W. was a boy, ?were meetings with cookies and milk
at the home of a nice old lady who represented the SPCA. The cookies were
digested more thoroughly than the teachings.?

?`We were terrible to animals,' recalled [Bush pal Terry] Throckmorton,
laughing. A dip behind the Bush borne turned into a small lake after a good
rain, and thousands of frogs would come out. `Everybody would get BB guns and
shoot them,' Throckmorton said. `Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw
them and blow them up.'?

Kristof made plain that ?we? explicitly included George W. Bush, and that George
W., the Safari Club International ?Governor of the Year? in 1999 for his support
of trophy hunting, was the leader among the boys who did it.

George W. Bush, 54, apparently learned hunting and alleged sportsmanship the
National Rifle Association way, from his father, former U.S. President George H.
Bush. NRA vice president Kayne Robinson boasted at a members-only meeting in
early 2000 that Bush, if elected, would be ?a president where we work out of
their office.?

That got some attention, along with the role of NRA executive vice-president
Wayne LaPierre in raising $250,000 at a recent Republican Party fundraiser
honoring Bush, and the Bush record as Texas governor of signing bills allowing
people to carry concealed handguns and take guns to church, and barring cities
from suing gun-makers.

Yet no one, not even Representative Tom Lantos (D-California), raised with
reference to Bush the character issue implicit in having recreationally shot and
blown up frogs -- or talked about the failure of humane education to dissuade
Bush from cruelty which must have been known by his famous father, as the
evidence would have been hard to conceal.

On May 25, however, Lantos and 20 other Representatives showed that they
should've recognized the character issue by introducing House Concurrent
Resolution 338. The Resolution, according to Lantos' press release, urges
?greater attention to identifying and treating individuals who are guilty of
violence against animals because of the link between abuse of animals and
violence against humans. In addition, it urges federal agencies to further
investigate the link between cruelty toward animals and violence against
humans.?

Offered Lantos, ?It is commonsense knowledge that any individual who harms
animals cruelly and deliberately is not otherwise well-adjusted. A man who
abuses the family dog or cat may turn that violence on his spouse or children.
Those children involved in school shootings weren't just `having fun' or `just
being boys' -- they were engaged in torturing and hurting animals. As a society,
we cannot overlook the fact that a person who hurts animals is committing an act
of violence and may eventually turn on human beings.?

But the only people George W. Bush is known to have had a part in killing were
the 135 convicts whose executions he has authorized during his five-and-a-half
years as Texas governor. Bush mocked the executed killer Karla Fae Tucker's plea
for her life in a falsetto, and reportedly giggled when asked by a journalist
how he could send the executed Gary Graham to die, when Graham's court-appointed
attorney was judicially admonished for sleeping through much of his trial.

DOPPELGANGER? If accused serial killer Robert Yates, 48, of Spokane, Washington,
had been caught and convicted in Texas, be might have been among those whose
killing by lethal injection Bush approved.

If Bush and Yates had been closer in age and geography, they might have been
friends, sharing their love of church, baseball, and -- especially -- using
their guns to kill small animals. Instead Yates grew up in Oak Harbor,
Washington. An April 26 investigative report on Yates' youth by Jessie Stensland
of the WHIDBEY NEWS-TIMES and SOUTH WHIDBEY RECORD buried mention of Yates'
hunting in the l7th paragraph of 21.

Like George W. Bush, Yates evidently graduated to trophy hunting. But instead of
blasting exotic species on Texas hunting ranches, be allegedly hunted young
suspected prostitutes. He allegedly terrorized them, robbed them, and shot at
least 18 of them at close range with a handgun. Yates shares his background as a
teenaged hunter not only with George W. Bush but also with at least 42 other
adults and 35 teens who have been charged with murder in recent years, whose
hunting backgrounds have surfaced -- albeit often just barely -- in news
coverage of their alleged crimes.

The WHIDBEY NEWS-TIMES and SOUTH WHIDBEY RECORD did not publish a letter by
ANIMAL PEOPLE editor Merritt Clifton citing the statistics; discussing the
traits that studies have found are often shared by hunters, serial killers, and
child abusers; and noting that early involvement in legal sport hunting -- not
just illegal animal torture -- also was in the reported backgrounds of convicted
school massacre perpetrators Luke Woodham, Andrew Golden, Mitchell Johnson, Kip
Kinkel, Michael Carneal, Barry Loukatis, and Evan Ramsey.

Press, public, and politicians who are just barely beginning to recognize the
link between illegal violence against animals and violence against humans remain
far from understanding the distinction between the inhibition about getting
caught that discourages illegality, and the inhibition about causing suffering
that George W. Bush's humane education teacher tried unsuccessfully to
encourage."

From: ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2000, p. 18.

I honestly didn't mean to come across as if I felt it was funny, and
clearly "prank" was the wrong word to use. My point was that usually
this sh.t happens from younger teenagers who have since either realized
what the did was evil and have felt horribly guilty - or they decided
they liked hurting things weaker than themselves and have since
graduated to humans. I worked in an animal shelter for years, and we
often saw things that were done to cats. When anyone was around who knew
what happened it was usually 13-16 year old boys. That was truly my only
point and I am sorry I made a flip remark without thinking it thru. I
very much care about humane treatment of animals and have dedicated
hundreds of my personal hours and many, many weekends in volunteer
activities to care for unwanted or mistreated animals.

Nimue: I don't know if you are aware - - - I only noticed this in one of my
final posts.....in posting, my newsgroups header picked up that of one of
the .....ummm..... people ??? ...... I responded to....... and therefore
your responses are cross-posting to 3 newsgroups instead of just this one.

I only mention it because of Diane's post, and I thought if this was
unintentional, you might want to delete them from your postings.  It
apparently is a tradition of trolls, as those groups have nothing to do with
the initial topic.

I hope I helped!

Mel

Quite possibly, the person who set his can in fire, has
mental disorder of some kind, to explain his atrocities
toward one's own "only companion." Because by now
cat's owner would have announced himself, if he was
not this guy, and indeed looking for his cat...