I have noticed, today, a few articles on online news media about taxidermists creating rugs out of domestic cats and dogs. It’s obviously disgusting. It is obviously self-indulgent. It obviously highlights a human weakness about death and being separated from their loved ones. And finally, it highlights a failure in the domestication of cats and dogs. This is not a good thing. It is disrespectful of companion animals. People need to grow up and accept the passing of their companion animal and retain memories in their mind.

They should not retain those memories by converting a living animal into a rug for the floor of their home or their sofa where they might walk on it or sit on it. As I said, it doesn’t work.
If I was in charge of Australia and New Zealand, I would ban taxidermists who provided this obnoxious service. Taxidermists are sick. Perhaps they get a kick out of it.
I recently wrote about an Australian woman who runs a taxidermy business called “Chimera Taxidermy”. Her name is Maddie (Maddy) who said that this kind of service is on the rise. It is becoming more popular I guess because people are becoming more self-indulgent and idiotic.

She turns the pelt i.e., the skin of domestic cats and dogs into ‘leather’ which stops the fur falling out. Does that sound right to you? Talking about your beloved cat companion as a leather object?
The Sun newspaper’s report qbout a New Zealander taxidermist is even worse. He has a collection of ornamental rugs online of which several are the pelts of dead farm cats apparently.
The man’s name is Andrew Lancaster. He described the domestic cat rugs as suitable for “home, office, shop display, or mancave”. An insensitive person who simply does not see the problem. He says that people who can’t afford a lion or tiger skin for their living room should consider a domestic cat rug instead.
His auction took place in 2018 and apparently attracted more than 85 bidders during the first few days. The objects included a mounted version of his own pet cat.
One of the farm cats turned into a mounted exhibit had been in his freezer for a few years.
Clearly, I am not alone in disliking this sort of thing. Perhaps my views are stronger than for others, but I feel they need to be.
What is wrong with holding the memory of your beloved cat or dog companion in your mind? That is all you need to be with her on their passing. You might keep their ashes in an urn in your home as a tangible connection but remember that a properly cremated dog or cat contains no DNA of the animal. Therefore, there is no actual physical connection between the ashes and the deceased animal. However, there will be an emotional connection. But have your cat individually cremated and be present to check.
For me, this is about as far as it goes in preserving your deceased companion animal. We need to show respect for them and not abuse the body of a deceased animal.
As I said, it disgusts me to think that a cat owner can hand over the body of their cat to a taxidermist, a person they don’t know and in the business of making money out of stuffing pets and ask them to remove all the internal organs and mess around with the body in all manner of horrible ways. We shouldn’t do that.
Perhaps people who ask a taxidermist to stuff their pet or turn them into a rug should watch the process taking place. Perhaps if they did that, they wouldn’t instruct a taxidermist to do the work.
It reminds me of Paul McCartney of the Beatles making his well-known statement about abattoirs having glass walls. If they did people would stop eating ‘meat’, a euphemism for the flesh of a dead animal.
The lack of sophistication of these antipodean peoples is also evident in their cruel shooting and poisoning of feral cats; utterly inhumane.
That’s how I felt “disrepectful” to a animal life. My mom gave me her 3 fur coats from the 70’s when she cleaned out her closet and I buried them. 🙂