Cat meat, on the other hand, is mostly consumed by middle-aged working class women, again for its perceived health benefits. Because cats are agile creatures, their meat and bones are thought to cure rheumatism - and working women need to ensure they remain in good health long into their sixties or seventies in order to support themselves financially. Cats are boiled (sometimes alive) in pressure-cookers and it usually takes ten cats to produce one small bottle of cat soju (
goyangi soju), an alcoholic elixir thought to keep arthritis at bay for a few weeks at a time. I also observed some shopkeepers adding cat meat to dog meat meals because cats are less expensive than dogs. This substitution helps keeps the production cost down in a market where a cat costs about the equivalent of £10, while a dog is about £100.
Julien Dugnoille
Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Exeter