And who would milk the cats?
I have a horrible feeling that perhaps this sign is for perverts who want to drink cat milk!
h/t: Steve
Did anybody ever think otherwise?
June 29, 2014 • 1:27 pm
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
OMG…that is awesome.
And who would milk the cats?
Avery brave man…
Aaargh! Punctuation…
Not to mention the difficulty in finding suitably low milking stools.
Ha ha!
And who would milk the cats?
Why the same person who would bell them, of course.
Masochistic mice…
Well, goat milk is from goats so….
And Milk of Magnesia is imported from a province of Greece, right?
I thought it was a bunch of magnesium. 🙂
That’s the same bad joke about olive oil is made from olives, so what’s baby oil made from?
Could be a joke, or it could be in response to knee jerk outragers. “How dare you sell milk from poor kitties! That horrible! How could you!!!”
These thinks can be confusing. Fish food is *for* fish. But fish meal is made *from* fish. (Though since some fish are carnivorous…) This seems like a problem with the English language.
And canned food has pictures of what’s inside, beans, peas, etc. but baby food has a picture of a baby on the outside. Same with cat food (cat picture) and dog food (dog picture).
You mean cat food’s not made from cats, dog food’s not made from dogs and baby food’s not made from babies? These images on packages have misled me!
“Serving suggestion”
Isn’t canned cat food often called cat meat in the UK?
Luckily my cat’s tins have pictures of the contents on the label, but his kibble has a picture of a person on it..
Hahahaha! Cat food is people! Forget about Soylent Green!
Nope, usually cat food/dog food. We don’t really use “cat/dog meat” over here.
But, but… Doctor Dolittle’s friend Matthew Mugg was a Cat’s-Meat Man by profession! Perhaps Lofting wrote in an archaic west-country dialect, though.
That’s only because there isn’t any “meat” in it. 😉
When my kids were very little I used to tell them ‘corn oil comes from corn, peanut oil comes from peanuts, so baby oil must come from babies, right?’
Amazingly they all turned out ok!
And then there are Girl Guide cookies …
Girl Scout: Is this made from real lemons?
Wednesday: Yes.
Girl Scout: I only like all-natural foods and beverages, organically grown, with no preservatives. Are you sure they’re real lemons?
Pugsley: Yes.
Girl Scout: Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy a cup if you buy a box of my delicious Girl Scout cookies. Do we have a deal?
Wednesday: Are they made from real Girl Scouts?
I remember a Leunig cartoon showing what really goes on the Ladies Powder Room (there were boxes of Powdered Ladies being loaded onto a truck out the back).
Yakov Smirnoff:
Haha! @ baby powder.
I really loved Yakov Smirnoff. What ever happened to him? I still laugh about “the door is ajar”
lolz.
Why would drinking milk from cats be more “perverted” than drinking milk from cows or goats?
Because Ceiling Cat told me it is immoral,and what He/She/It/Hir commands is the Moral Law.
Cat milk is for the sacred kittens, not hoomans.
I find it interesting that you would view those that want to drink the actual milk of cats as perverts. What is it that makes cows ok, but other species less so? Whilst I wouldn’t go out of my way to seek the milk of other species, out of curiosity I would sample the milk of other species if presented with the opportunity (and the knowledge it had been obtained ethically).
You have a hankering to drink cat milk or something?
All I do (if the ‘milk’ looks weird) is claim lactose intolerance.
I have heard that there is highly credible data that milk was the reason the Vikings never established a real settlement in North America. The Inuit people greeted them friendlily enough and they celebrated with a big feast (sort of Plymouth Rock to the north) and the Vikings brought milk and cheese. Unfortunately, as is the case in most Mongolian ethnic-types, the Inuit were lactose intolerant, and the next day the Vikings were no longer welcome and were charged with ‘intended genocide.’
Not a hankering, but I’d be willing to give it a go if the opportunity ever presented itself. I doubt it will, and if it doesn’t, I shan’t feel that my life has been left unfulfilled.
I like to try new food/drink. I like drinking cow’s milk, so why not other species?
Of course the answer seems to be “because that’s icky”. But it’s interesting that people view it so.
I’m not sure that carnivore milk would take great.
I also wonder how much of cattle, sheep, and goat breeding has accomplished in making their milk more palatable. I suspect a lot.
I think Ben Stiller’s character in “Meet the Parents” claims to have milked a cat.
There’s a tiny bell ringing in the back of my mind. An interview with some Very Respected Scientist who mentions his first “real job” in the lab as having been to milk the hamsters, or something similar.
Without getting particularly perverse, one can imagine situations where one might need to do something like that.
“You can milk anything with nipples.”
“I have nipples, Focker. Can you milk me?”
“Did anybody ever think otherwise?”
Probably. It’s amazing the number of people with such little awareness of the world that they can’t perceive the winking eye.
Our local zoo had an exhibit of animatronic dinosaurs years ago and supposedly there was some number of customers who asked for a refund when they found out the dinosaurs weren’t real.
And then there are the people who think that global warming is a hoax…..
You should try dragon milk.
It comes from short-legged cows.
Ba-dum — Cha!
And do you know what they call a cow with NO legs?
Ground beef.
Pull the udder one!
Well, I did know a guy who when he wanted to put some milk in the work fridge for his coffee but didn’t want to invite other people to use it would label the bottle “Not Milk”.. I’m not sure I would have ever though cat milk came from cats, but a milk bottle labeled “Not Milk” certainly makes you wonder about just what is inside.
Semen?
Or less frighteningly, a milk substitute like Lactaid, soy, almond or coconut milk that you don’t want in your coffee or cereal if you’re expecting milk. Soy milk is kind of an unnatural substance.
I actually liked watching the convection patterns that the curdled soy milk would trace in the coffee. Pass another spliff, man!
You can have all mine. Soy just upsets my stomach.
For the record, Lactaid isn’t a milk substitute. It’s milk with lactase added.
Altered Milk Like Substance.
Come to think of it, I guess cat milk would be a lot like Lactaid since cats probably need lactase or something like it added.
All mammals have functioning lactase before they’re weaned. There’s some kind of magical force field that makes these things happen, what was it called? Oh yes: natural selection.
But if ‘cat milk’ is formulated for adult cats, you’re probably right.
Without the sarcasm, a glance at the ingredient list for cat milk products indicates that they are aimed at adult cats as they contain lactase and are advertized as being low in lactose. I didn’t investigate the products which were clearly made for kittens.
I always drink soy milk at home just because regular milk hurts my stomach a bit. When I was a kid, I used to drink powdered milk (yuck, but I somehow liked it).
Try some Whiskas Catmilk. It is low on lactose, if that is the issue. Just be sure to lap it up like a cat.
Yuck. I don’t have those cat spines on my tongue for that. I will stick with Soy.
Cats don’t use the spines on their tongues for drinking. How they drink turns out to be far more amazing and was the subject of a bonafide scientific study with surprising results. This article is pretty good.
The Surprising Physics of Cats’ Drinking
Cool! I think I saw that one but can’t recall where….maybe here.
Cats enjoy licking me for some reason. I must taste or smell like fish.
@Diana I know what you mean. I loved Spaghettios as a kid. I tried a bite of them not long ago and OMG gag me!
To each his own. I think soy milk is just fine.
[SIGH] In the cuttings processing lab a couple of months ago, they were keeping a pale yellow industrial detergent in drinking water bottles. Not even ones with a label or notice written on the side. STOP card : have you guys not thought about what you’re doing?
They were very slack about labelling their other reagents too – water, 3.5% HCl(aq), 18% HCl(aq), various dyes ; they’d get the labelling wrong too (“50% HCl” as a solution in water – that’s the 18% solution, I reckon). Oh, the ignorance of novices in the land of the laboratory!
@gravelinspector
I had a friend who was a motivational speaker. She was giving a talk to a group of women in someone’s home and as she was setting up her equipment, she asked the host for a glass of water. Apparently (hopefully!) the lady misunderstood and gave my friend one of the little punch cups. Being busy and not carefully attending, my friend just tossed it (think of a tequila shot) but unfortunately it was a glass of chlorine bleach.
Not pleasant, but unlikely to be fatal.
Before I started doing lab work at school, my father told me of a colleague in the late 1950s, who was in the habit of keeping a beaker of water on the bench while he was doing analyses, preparations, etc. and he’d drink from it when he saw fit.
Despite protest from his colleagues, he persisted in this habit. Until the day that he was doing a procedure that involved a solution of potassium cyanide. And he picked up the wrong beaker. And was dead before he finished falling off his stool.
I never did figure out what analyses Dad’s lab would have been doing which involved KCN, so I do have some misgivings about the story. But I got the message.
I hope it isn’t missing children!
Chances are somebody will figure out a way to turn this product display into some kind of cat video pretty soon.
Check out The Knight Life on GoComics!
http://www.gocomics.com/theknightlife/2014/06/29
“And who would milk the cats?”
Thufir Hawat!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thufir_Hawat#Portrayal_in_other_media
Apparently someone got cat milk because someone has analyzed it
http://ansci.illinois.edu/static/ansc438/Milkcompsynth/milkcomp_table.html
10.9% fat
11.1% protein
3.4% lactose
25.4% total solids
which would make cat milk incredibly rich. Jersey cow milk according to the same site is
5.5% fat
3.9% protein
4.9% lactose
.7% ash (aka minerals)
15.0% total solids
Human milk
4.5% fat
1.1% protein
6.8% lactose
0.2% ash
12.6% total solids
How did they milk the whale?! Can’t imagine the polar bear was too thrilled either!
Ahab.
Modern analytical chemistry is pretty sophisticated – I imagine it wouldn’t take more than a spilled drop or two.
Noting that the prices suggest that this is somewhere in Limeyland, maybe a Monty Python revival just passed thru?
You watch TV news, PCC?
That surprised me. I find it time inefficient. I’ll tune in only when I want to actually see something. I was TV-less when the Berlin Wall was coming down. I bought a TV so I could see that.
I get a lot of my news from following foreign correspondents on Twitter, many from the BBC. Else, I listen to my news on CBC as a commute. I can’t stand watching because they fill it with a lot fluff that drives me crazy.
So is catnip when you bite the cat or vice versa?
Why wouldn’t cat mlk be from cats? They’re mammals, and mild from cats would be the best for kittens to drink. Just what I’d want if I were trying to rescue a young orphaned kitten.
A delicacy prized throughout Europe!
😉
The sign is necessary: you have to remember that we live in a country where the majority of people don’t believe in evolution, and a substantial number think the sun revolves around the Earth!
The supermarket in question is The Cooperative, a mutual organisation and one which is common in the remoter parts of Scotland where there’s not enough business for the big companies.
That said, I haven’t seen that sign in our local store, so perhaps this is from a store down in Englandshire.
I would suppose it was the same ‘catboys’ that herded and wrangled them.
Well, we DO have to print ‘Do not eat’, on the packets that come in air tight containers because some idiot might just ingest it. I have a friend from Poland who just shakes her head when she sees these things. She told me that in her country, they rely on common sense and just assume that the inedible is just that. The problem: a million gainfully employed lawyers!