Pru Leith Drowned Kittens!

[barry1010]

My word, she was foolish to admit that. It was, shamefully, common practice before cats were routinely spayed - it was a different world and wasn't her decision.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-11271051/Dame-Prue-Leith-recalls-horrific-moment-drowned-bag-kittens-child.html
She's getting no sympathy from the DM readers

Did she do the right thing to mention it in her book?

[burlyshirley1]

I think she should have kept quiet about it and rightly or wrongly, I will struggle to watch her on TV again, especially as she went into so much detail about it. I am 100% behind the DM comments.

[pastafreak]

While this is undoubtedly a painful memory from her childhood, and it describes how times have changed, I don't think she should have mentioned it. Even though it was her mum who did it, and children were far less likely to be disobedient then...every person who reads about it will associate her with the deed and blame her.
Quite a few comments are people recalling it in their families or villages.

[FatticusInch]

It’s not as Front Page as Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster but it’s the Daily Mail, so anything is possible for a headline, bar the crises the country is facing of course.

[DTCwordfan]

idiot - I could say that I'm surprised that she and her mother didn't cook them....

[douglas9401]

The drugs don't work, they just make you worse.

[nero2024]

no cats were not spayed by the general public in her / my day people did not have the money or anywhere even to go to have this done us (poor) people who had cats let them out at night to do what ever they wanted hence many unwanted kittens there would be many thrown out to fen and die of starvation if they were not "quickly" drowned and btw no cat food apart from kitekat was available and the it was our food first, the cats we had got the scraps and foraged for themselves all i may add lived long lives apart from the unwanted kittens.people giving red marks in the mail are obviously the younger generation, with no knowledge of the past
and btw the getting rid of unwanted female births in some counties does even now exist

[tiggerblue10]

I would imagine this happened frequently back then and throughout history. Well apart from say, in Egypt where cats were god-like and worshipped. Horrific and upsetting as it may be, I'm sure it still happens all around the world.

[douglas9401]

It would all be over much quicker if it wasn't for the nine lives thing.

[wolf63]

If she wanted to mention it in her book she should have made it a passing comment on how things were back when she was a child.

We got a kitten in the early 70s that had been saved from being drowned, I am not sure if its littermates were so lucky.
It was far too young to be away from its mother. It disappeared and was never seen again - but my recollections of it are pretty sketchy.

[pastafreak]

People still do horrid things to unwanted kittens. It's just that now there are many more options to save them and people should know better. The rescue I got Toby from currently has 70+ and more coming...they have had over 150 this year. Those are the ones saved...

[Atheist]

Prue Leith was also complicit in the routine slaughter of food animals. Surely the drowning of a new-born kitten is not as horrific as the abattoir slaughter of a large animal which is old enough to have a more developed sense of self and its surroundings and bonding with fellow creatures.

[TheWinner]

Apparently she likes being famous. Well she's famous for a very different reason now...........

[DTCwordfan]

An absolute cat-astrophe for Pru's publicity.

[davebro]

and Teresa May ran through a wheat field - disgusting!

[Vagus]

It was a long time ago, things were different then and this was commonplace so it doesn’t alter my liking of Pru. What I don’t understand is why she decided to put it in her book.

[davebro]

cos she's so up herself that she thinks folks want to know every detail of her life?