Preserved Cats for Educational Purposes

For between $57 and $102 you can buy a cat preserved in “safe, non-toxic Carolina’s Perfect Solution and in a dry-packed, vacuum-sealed plastic bag”. These dead and preserved cats are almost certainly euthanised shelter cats. The company that sells them is called “Carolina”. I think they’re based in North Carolina and they sell to educational establishments as far as I am aware.

Preserved cat
Preserved cat

They even list on their website pregnant cats nicely preserved and packaged in a vacuum pack ready. They are ready to be dissected. Do you remember those schools where they dissect cats in their biology classes? Well, I suppose, some of them come from this sort of business.

The unwanted pet or abandoned domestic cat has been reduced to a product no different to any other consumer product – dead and inert.

It is the ultimate “reduction” and conversion from what should be a loved companion animal to a processed product. This factory produced product isn’t the end of this cat’s journey because, as mentioned, he/she is going to be cut up, picked over, discussed, analysed, even laughed at and then disposed of in a trash can.

This can’t be right can it? This is not the way it was meant to be when people decided to domesticate the wild cat. They weren’t meant to be debased like this and used. This can’t be right for so many reasons, one of which is that if a shelter has a commercial outlet for dead cats then they are more likely to kill cats for any reason that they can find be it reason unreasonable or reasonable; it doesn’t really matter. I’ve mentioned that point before. This goes against the purpose of a cat “shelter”.

A cat’s life should be precious. There should be resistance to selling the carcass of a cat for financial profit. People are the trustees of the welfare of domestic cats. People speak on behalf of the domestic cat. The cat does not give his/her permission for his body to be used in this way. The decision is made by people and I wonder whether we have the right to do this.

That may surprise a lot of people who will clearly think I’m quite insane to write about cats in this way but I see them as sentient beings of equal value to humans and therefore with rights akin to the rights given to humans. If we convert the charming living domestic cat into a dead vacuum packed product we are dramatically devaluing the cat which can only lead to more killing of cats and a careless approach to their welfare.


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