A vet has commented on the cultural understanding that your cat would eat your face if you suddenly keeled over and died at home.
Though cats are mostly docile (emphasis on the mostly), they do have some tendencies that remind you of their relation to tigers, lions, and leopards. There is also the belief that regardless of how close you are to your feline, it will eat you without a second thought if you die alone in your house.
Will your cat eat your face when you die?
If you look at your feline friend and wonder whether they will chow down on your face when you perish, you’ve come to the right place. In a recent TikTok video from Antelope Pets, one vet sat down to address myths and facts relating to pets.
“There actually was a psychology professor who was curious enough about this to interview first responders, since those are usually the people that are finding those that pass away unexpectedly in their houses,” she explained. “There was definitely a difference in what they noticed in the cat versus the dog households.”
She continued: “In the dog households, the vet said emergency responders typically had a harder time of extracting the body. The dogs would become protective of their owner, sometimes to the point of aggression.
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“They noticed in the households with cats that there would be bite marks on the body, like it looked like the cat was starting to nibble on their owner.”
Admittedly, she said it was unclear whether the cats were trying to get a response from their owner or whether they were attempting to sustain themselves on human flesh.
People are now terrified of their cats
As it turns out, lots of cat owners already have a complicated relationship with their bundle of claws and teeth. They are also aware that their cat might eat their face.
One person wrote: “My cat bites me if I’ve been asleep too long… is she trying to eat me.”
“I think the bites are to get a response. My cat always wakes my dad up by slowly bitting him every morning around the same time so he can feed her,” another person said.
A third added: “Common cat win. I’m dead, what am I gonna do with my body? Might as well be useful.”
