The AFP News headline screams: Poisoned cat stew “killed Chinese tycoon,” but notice the scare quotes of conjecture around the words.
If the story’s true that a business associate of the billionaire tampered with the “cat meat hotpot—a local delicacy” (notice our scare quotes), he also went on to eat the meal with the tycoon and another associate. According to published theories, the addition of a noxious flowering plant, gelsemium elegans, made all three dining men ill, but the other two recovered rather than dying. Eating the dose sure seems like a big risk if you’re a competent cat-stew poisoner, but the autopsy reports are expected within a month, which ought to prove the case one way or another.
Meanwhile, this photo captures why many of us are too afraid to risk feline-sourced foodstuffs in the first place.
Image via OMGKitty!!!!