I have never heard of it, but it sounds like fun. It would
be good to put my ex-girlfriend's cat out of my misery.

Oh dear. Just noticed this topic has already been done on another thread. Sorry about that.

I remember seeing an article about this quite some time back. Perhaps the Swissinfo archives might have something?

Yup, here's the thread:

Cat lovers petition to ban cat fur production

wow, is it really legal to hunt cats here? and sell cat fur? i mean besides the news article has anyone actually seen this?

-i dont like cats, but this is sad...

Sounds like fun. I do not think so.

The farm next to us had 2 cats go missing a couple of months ago and they're pretty sure they went to the fur trade. In the sticks it's also known that people eat cat meat. No, it is not fun.

In a lot of shops you see those little cat baskets with like a fluffy cat in it in minature. Someone told me that it was real cat fur - I am not sure?

It's pretty sad but I live out in the wop wops too and my neighbours have told me about how their cat miraculously made it back home´after being shot. The vet removed the bullet and Fluffy (sorry can't recall real name ) still lives to this day.

Cat theft is also an issue, I hear. Another neighbour has cats and they're tagged and chipped and all.

Makes me wonder what's up with the moggy-meddling mentalities that are out there.

My post is not a joke! Cat meat was and probably still is a delicassy in certain parts of CH!

My swiss husband also confirms your post

This was one of the topics our Swiss neighbours brought up at dinner one evening. They never mentioned delicassy though, they just said dogs and cats were common food during and after the war.

Which war? the Gulf one? I was told this by a swiss guy, his father was a butcher and he told me that he used to prepare cat meat for some customers! I was a bit shocked, I always tought that the practice was only made in far east countries!

I never knew about this - but now that I do, I must say I'm completely and utterly disgusted! Quite frankly, I would have never expected a country as advanced as Switzerland to legalize something like this. Sure, where I come from (former USSR), people haven't heard of animal rights and would probably torture a kitty for a past time; but I genuinely thought that Switzerland was a little bit more developed in this regard.

Did some search in Google, about the practice, you cant imagin what I found! cat and dog also! The trade is illegal but the use at home isnt!

Sometimes kitty just moves house. My flatmate's cat at home moved out the day stepmom moved in. My flatmate and his siblings reckon the cat was wiser than them.

And my father has what I call a "time-share cat", the neighbour's cat has decided that my father's house is more suited to her needs so she basically lives with him. Goes home occasionally but is with us so often that the owner has decided that my dad should a) bring kitty to the vet and b) pay for it. He did. Not our fault if our neighbour has obnoxious kids and doesn't meet with kitty's standards, right?

On a more serious note though, a lot of people just don't like cats and because they are "easier" targets than dogs, what with wandering freely, they are subject to these foolish people's sometimes superstitious cruelty. Even my father's neighbour (not the one with the cat) once told my dad that he'd shoot our cats if he caught them on his land. My father calmly retorted that "Das ist nicht etwas, was man dem Sohn eines Sprengmeisters sagt..." (roughly "that is not something to say to the son of a explosives artificer"). Luckily the guy moved before any C4 ended up in his flower pots.

as someone who has had to shoot, trap and kill numerous cats, please get your cats spayed and/or neutered.

i used to live on a farm and for some reason people thought our barn needed cats. so it seemed they were constantly being abandoned at our farm. and aparently not fixed, since we had dozens of the damn things running around. once the cute little kitties seemed determined to kill all our chickens, there wasnt much to do but get rid of them.

too bad there wasnt a fur market in massachusetts back then, we could have at least made our beer money.

to put it upfront, I am a cat owner, and I love cat !

to me, it's just very uncivilized to skin a cat, it's especially shocking in advanced country like switzerland.

I am not a big fan of dog or any other pets but it never comes across to me that I want them to get hurt from cruelty.

I read a lot of articles saying that people who like to hurt/torture animals are basically having mental issues in their subconscious minds.....

This is a problem on many farms here in Switzerland too. And yes, cats get killed because there are too many. But what is the poor farmer supposed to do? Especially once they start getting sick and spreading the disease to other cats. It's not easy trying to find homes for cats, especially wild barn cats. However, the farmers I know do not sell the fur for income. They find it a disgusting trade.

I don't have any farm nor having experience as farmer so my question might be a bit naive......why don't those farmers build a higher fence against cat entry? as a cat owner, I know cat jumps high but there's always a limit like 1.2 m. I know sparrow or other flying insects also cause trouble to farm but the farmers don't shoot them not because of being kind but due to the huge number and difficulty, instead they build net or similar thing to protect against their invasion. so by same token, why couldn't they do the same (preventive measure) instead of taking offensive way (to kill the cat)?