"I had the grilled fish taken away by our cat."

Question

I had the grilled fish taken away by our cat.

Can this sentence both mean

(1) "I intentionally left the fish so that our cat could take it to wherever she wants to eat it." and
(2) "I left the fish, not having anticipated our cat would come and take it away."?

Nona the brit · Accepted Answer

Oh dear, this is an extension of the I had my bag stolen post, isn't it.

Ok. Neither sounds natural in this case.

Meaning 1. 'had it taken away by our cat'. Not natural as you are not making an arrangement with the cat. There has to be an element of mutual agreement here and the thing doing the action has to be doing it as a deliberate act according to your wishes.. A mechanic can agree to fix your car. Someone can agree to paint your wall. A cat is not capable of agreeing to your arangement.

Meaning 2) I suppose you could just stretch the meaning here but it sounds very odd. You don't think of cats taking things away. Again, that implies a level of thought not available to a cat! It may have eaten it. I may have stolen it. But you wouldn't talk of it taking something away. I had the grilled fish eaten by the cat. I had the grilled fish stolen by the cat. It still doesn't sound quite natural though. In this context you really would just say 'the cat ate the fish'.

Teleostomi · Answer

Your help is always tonic for my thirst for improving my English!

But it is possible for cats to "take away" fish so as to eat it at other places, don't you think?

Nona the brit · Answer

Yes a cat might take something away.

But you didn't have your cat take something away.

Marius Hancu · Answer

Yes, non-standard English, in this context, not to be recommended, especially as it is confusing.

CalifJim · Answer

I agree completely with Nona on this question, but I'd like to add just a little.

Leave out "I had" meaning "I arranged". That's not going to work at all.

Now, for the other interpretation, "I had something happen to me by someone acting on purpose" is the meaning conveyed. The cat was not trying to make something happen to you on purpose. We don't think of cats as capable of that kind of planning and deliberately targeting you as the victim, so the sentence just won't work.

To make it sound more like something that happened to you, you can add my or our. You can remove grilled as well, since the cat wouldn't care that it was grilled. In fact, it seems to me that the fewer words the better in this sort of construction.

I had my fish taken by the cat.

In my opinion, this improves the sentence without completely saving it.

CJ

Nona the brit · Answer

Yes I like Jim's shorter version. In this case 'taken' stands in for 'stolen'.

Goodman · Answer

Teleostomi
I had the grilled fish taken away by our cat.
Can this sentence both mean

(1) "I intentionally left the fish so that our cat could take it to wherever she wants to eat it." and
(2) "I left the fish, not having anticipated our cat would come and take it away."?

The forum experts have already given you the correct explanations and answers. I just want to add a few lines in light of this kind of sentence construction.

I had my …[noun] + [past participle] …. Needs to be applied correctly with the proper situation / condition. Otherwise the tone will sound really strange.

John’s car got towed away because he parked at the handicap stall. – This is a passive and correct construction. His car was towed and John is the owner, but he didn’t tow the car, someone else did. So John and the car were the recipient of the towing.

I just had my car washed yesterday and it rains today – This is still a passive construction, The context only suggested the car was washed but did not say by “whom”.

This could mean you washed the car, or you had taken the car to a “carwash” to have it washed.

For your posted sentence, as CJ said, “grilled” or not, it’s irrelevant. But “I had my fish taken away by the cat”, the “I had my…” tone is messy. This thought could be more direct to the meaning if converted to: “The stupid cat sneaked away with my fish”.

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"I had the grilled fish taken away by our cat."

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