While it is a little sick, he has every right to do it. I do reserve my right to object to him flying his drone over my property.

It's not the taste of steak vegs object to.

Who cares what he does with his dead cat.

That cat thing is pretty disturbing, but as long as he didn't kill the cat just to do that, I don't have a problem with it.

In the past, people would make use of every part of a dead animal. He just happened to use his for entertainment.

Agree with NicoleK: Dead cat? Not sure why I'm supposed to be indignant about it, and a flying cat is kind of imaginative. I wouldn't make a special trip to see it, though.

Now, if the guy came up with a flying, stuffed Uncle Jasper? That I might be tickets for!

One of the (may!) reasons that I stopped reading Boing Boing was their glorification of "extreme" taxidermy.

For whatever reason, I think that the dead should be treated with some respect.

(Except for FDR, of course - I'd gladly dig up his corpse and defecate in his skull).

I suspect that it gets back to the Sanctity / Degradation aspect of morality that conservatives have and liberals tend to lack (although I am not a political conservative I very much have a social conservative's "ick" factor).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt

So:

* should it be legal to turn a dead cat into a toy? Yes.
* am I revolted? Yes.
* may others be revolted? Yes.
* may others pass a law? No.
* may Amy be revolted that others are revolted? I disagree with her, but yes.

I find it almost amusing, and I adore cats. If the cat was dead, who cares what's done with the shell?

How is this different than stuffing a head and mounting it on a wall? Not saying I'd ever do it (we don't backyard bury, either, we toss int he trash) but I don't get the outrage for him doing it.

I'm an admitted cat slave, I felt a gut-level disgust for what he did, so I put some time into figuring out just why this guys actions seem so awful to me.

Maybe it's too much Stephen King, but there's just something mentally ill about doing this to your pet, no matter how clever our 'artistic' you are.

Or maybe it's just the expression on the cat's face. If they had given it that smug expression cats wear it might not bug me so much.

Or maybe it's the thought of the other idiots who will think this is a great idea and put their own spin on it.

Or maybe it's the general disdain people seem to have for dead cats, that makes me feel angry. So think about doing something so undignified and disrespectful to an animal you actually love, and maybe you'll get it.

That said, I do like the Helo-Kitty title.

Heh, I read the other day that the guy is going to give Orville bigger motors and batteries...

all of my cat cuddler friends were horrified, and I was amused in a macabre sort of way.

But when fluffy dies, why do we think it's dignified to put her in a box in the ground in the back yard?

The only thing I can think of that puts people out is that you are doing something with fluffy's body after fluffy herself is gone. I suppose I can see that, but I can't imagine that any sort of law or rule should be made about it...

Americans are really messed up when it comes to death. As a group, we are more akin to the ancient Egyptian obsession of preservation than anything remotely modern. It's all very pagan.

Come on Joe, everyone knows that an allpowerful god cant ressurect bodies that werent preserved with formaldahyde and burried in a box that costs more than good used car

Please. Americans are no more messed up than any other country when it comes to death rituals. We haven't mummified any of our leaders and kept them behind glass to parade around on a regular basis yet, even if some of our living politicians do look like Disney animatronics.

Turning one's former pet into an electronic plaything seems to be a new twist in American ingenuity, if one goes by the commentary. Unless the Japanese have some stuff they haven't shared with us yet.

To me, it's more an example of the saying that just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should.

There is a difference between mummifying your vaunted leader and mummifying everyone.

What I find especially amusing is that the American death ritual flies in the face of the Christian ideal of resurrection. Christian religions have been the most adamant about opposing cremation and in denouncing just about everyone's rituals. Thus my quip that while the US is majority Christian its death ritual is remarkably pagan.

(Then there is the American obsession with hallowed ground and marking the place of death. Yes, Latinos take this to an greater extreme, especially with road side markers, but I still find the American urge to make sites of dramatic death off limits ridiculous.)

Joe, you got me curious, so I just looked up embalming in the US and I see it adheres to the grand tradition of making money, which is far more
a religion in America than Christianity is these days. So, see, it makes perfect sense. Apparently things were a lot more simple and natural before the Civil War.

My husband and I are donating our remains to science. BioGift will pick up our corpses and when they are finished they cremate the remains and either send them back to our relatives or get rid of them. No funeral, no final resting place, no expense.

Hopefully, this will happen before things degenerate to the point of someone making marionettes out of us or giving us motors and moving parts that would have been more useful while we were alive.

When our beloved Main Coon died, I buried most of him, but his tail I preserved for my wife. After curing it like a fox tail or the like, it was added to her coat/poncho she'd woven along with some fox and wolf tails. Some friends see it as macabre, and some see it as we do, a way to keep Floyd around and remember him. I thought the cat copter was kind of an odd version. The cat is gone, but he can still bring joy to the people who loved having him around.

I'm envisioning the cats I'e loved divebombing some dogs, and smiling. I think that's what he's going for, here.

I remind all of you bemoaning the "American way of death" that this is a Dutch cat with a Dutch owner. Ain't an American thing at all.

And, as I have been informed by my betters over and over for decades, Europeans are both intellectually and morally superior to Americans. Therefore, this is perfectly fine!

Holy crap, Gene. For the last couple of days I've been so freaked-out about the actual occurrence, I blanked out on where it happened! Then when Joe mentioned Americans and death I just forgot it hadn't happened here. I'm actually relieved. Thank's.

Tofu exists so that vegetarians can have spam too.