Minnesota owl uses talons to carry helpless, possibly doomed cat into the sky [PHOTO]

How an owl prepares its food.

An amazing image of an owl hoisting an unfortunate kitty cat into the air is circulating around the U.K. media... on National Cat Day, of all times.

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Scant information is available about the photo, which apparently was snapped right here in Minnesota.

Here the full image:

Exclusivepix

As the U.K. Sun notes, "Owls are known to fly cats high into the air before dropping them on the ground to kill them." Adds the Huffington Post, more brutally: "Owls fly high up into the air, then drop their prey and snack on the corpse."

It isn't known whether the cat in the photograph lived to meow about the tale, but if it did, he or she certainly used up a few of their nine lives in the process.