We've discovered that our new cat has a secret psychopathic side, a case of Dr Striker and Mister Hyde except the lunatic rage-madman side is only unlocked when he's got a mouthful of flesh. Aka "The absolute worst time to discover that something has a lunatic rage-madman side."
Beware this crazed monster! (We accept you may find this warning difficult to process.)
I discovered this when I gave him a mostly-eaten chicken leg. He's already experienced the incomparable joys of meat meat, because thanks to the wonderful Lady X even our cats eat better than most humans, but this ...changed him. In the same way the Vietnam war or gamma radiation ...changes things. He's always growled for meat, dashing off the table with it clutched in his mouth (because if there's one group he doesn't trust with food it's the people who just gave it to him) - but this was the first thing he'd had with joints, tendons and various other "this came from an actual torn apart animal" indicators. Indicators which flipped his internal (and heretofore unknown) personality switch from "adorable" to "CHANNEL THE SPIRIT OF KING MURDER-LION!"
PS Even having a personality switch means you're definably mentally ill.
He started growled like jet-engine sucking in a bucket of gravel, a loud and very dangerous sound emphasising that if you're not made of something explosion-proof it would be a fantastic idea to run for your life. The exact noise was "GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRPHTHTHTHTHTHTHTHT" as he his Howl Of The Wolf was drowned by an enormous fart, as every muscle in his body tensed so hard it shoved every atom of air out of both ends. Grenade pins have made less dangerous noises bouncing off petrol stations.
He was so angry he couldn't think - he locked in place, clutching his meat and refusing to move as he tried to sonically defend it from the entire universe. He focused on Neutrino (our other cat, who had up to then been "big brother" but was now very clearer "The First We Shall Kill, Meat, We Shall Rend Him And Make More Meat.") Striker kept roaring like a burning nuclear reactor while Neutrino didn't move because he knew he was outside the range any sane cat could consider threatening. But that wasn't the kind of cat Striker was anymore.
I had to take Neutrino into another room, if only for his own protection, and instead of relaxing Striker it merely completed his conversion into Catbeth - a tragic soul destroyed by paranoia after acquiring the one thing he most desired. He arched his way around flat one step at a time, emitting 360° hatred and tormented by invisible enemies. You've probably noticed how cats can see invisible specks of dust, but Striker could see invisible snipers and every single one of them was trying to kill him and take his flesh. Once every five minutes he'd dare to actually eat a bit of the chicken, before gravimetrically detecting that space-time itself was out to get him and dashing across the room more aggressively than fourteen Rambos headbutting a nuclear warhead.
It took him over an hour to eat five grams of meat. It's also why we'll never give him more than that, or need to invest in home security. An entire terrorist army could invade our home, foolishly (but flatteringly) mistaking me for Bruce Willis, and all we'd need to do is throw Striker a chicken and hide in the bathroom. For that much meat he'd beat up the Incredible Hulk, and I'm fairly sure we could tunnel through the floor and escape - possibly to China - before he finished enough of the meat to even consider where we'd gone.
