10 strangest TV character food obsessions

Cats — Alf

A network sitcom could never, ever get away with what Alf did. Even the implication of eating a household pet would have been completely scandalous. There certainly would be zero tolerance for an anthropomorphic puppet trying to stuff a live kitten into his mouth. But this is only one of the things we can celebrate about ’80s TV.

When Alf debuted in 1984, times were very different, and his appetite for cats was just a quirk we were supposed to accept from this alien life form. Alf, whose actual name is Gordon Sumway, is from the planet Melmac, on which cats are treated and regarded much like we do cattle. His attitudes change, however, as the series progresses, and Alf softens to cats as pets.

In fact, his feelings for the family cat, Lucky, take a dramatic turn. He pretends to stalk him like prey throughout the series, but he never has the actual gumption to eat him. He comes to recognize Lucky as a beloved family member, and even finds a replacement for him after Lucky’s untimely death.

A glaring difference between ’80s TV and TV of today is that an appetite for household pets would indicate something terribly sinister and the alien would gobble up that cat in a bloody, gory mess, Stranger Things-style. Contemporary television would never ask modern audiences to accept and love a creature that devours our lovable pets.

It would be a macabre and morbid thing to suggest any recipes made from a domesticated animal, but Martha Stewart can offer a super cute sugar-cookie alternative.