Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: And Other Questions About Dead Bodies

by Caitlin Doughty

But that’s the end of the good news. Your dog will totally eat you. “Oh no!” you say. “Not man’s best friend!” Oh yes. Fifi Fluff will attack your corpse without remorse. There are cases where forensics experts first suspect a violent murder has occurred, only to discover that the damage was Ms. Fluff attacking the dead body postmortem. Your dog might not nip and tear at you because she’s starving, however. More likely Fifi Fluff will be attempting to wake you up. Something has happened to her human. She’s probably anxious and tense. In this situation, a dog might nibble the lips off her owner, just like you bite your nails or refresh your social media feed. We all have our anxiety busters! One very sad case involved a woman in her forties who was known to be an alcoholic. Often, when she was intoxicated and unconscious, her red setter would lick her face and bite her legs to try to rouse her. After she died, flesh was found missing from her nose and mouth. The setter had tried to rouse her human again and again, with increasing force, but couldn’t wake her.