The Taxidermy Plan

Til death do us part

The conversation started with Scootch asleep in a ball on top of that disgusting rug-covered cat tower. When he lays like that, a log of orangey fur, you might not even know what you’re looking at. 

“He looks like a muff,” Stephen said, “which is what we should make him into when he dies.”

“No way, we’ll get him taxidermied,” I said without hesitation.

“Only if we never want to have people over again,” said Stephen. He was right about that. At least it would considerably tighten our friend circles, narrowing it down to pretty much only Nola, who appreciates the grotesque as much as she appreciates cats, and my mother.

I can’t say what appeals to my mom about taxidermy except that for decades now she’s been saying that, when her time comes, this is what she would like us to do with her body. “So that I can still be in the Christmas pictures,” she says without a trace of irony. When I was a kid and she would say this, I pictured her in the corner of the room on a slab of polished wood with her arms up over her head, her hands in a claw shape and her mouth open like a bear. What she has in mind is more placid- posed peacefully sitting in a chair with a cup of coffee, her legs crossed at the knee, like a pet curled up next to the fireplace. 

When I say this, you’re probably picturing a kind of Morticia Addams-type, an aloof, vampy matriarch with long dark hair who smokes cigarettes out of a holder and has cocktails in the parlor before dinner each night. Now picture the exact opposite of that, and that’s mom. She’s a short, midwestern blond who doesn’t wear makeup or earrings but has more shoes than she has occasions to wear them. She doesn’t drink or smoke, she drives a baby blue Volkswagen bug and she likes to make soap and watch the Mariners. And she wants to be stuffed when she dies. 

She’s at the age now where she will get the occasional catalogue targeting senior citizens. Other than a clip-on book light, most of these items for sale are comically premature; Stay-Dry incontinence pads, folding shower safety chairs, pre-paid funeral planning. When some well-meaning sales associate will ask her what her burial and final expense plans are, she usually tells them she intends to be stuffed and waits for them to thank her quietly for her time. 

Thankfully, this practice is illegal in the states. The reasons, surprisingly, have more to do with impracticality than anything else. The lifelike effect is ruined with human skin, as is stretches more than animal skin and doesn’t tan well. Hairless animals, such as pigs, require a lot of airbrushing and epoxy to maintain the illusion that it is living. Hiding the seams, as well, is more difficult with hairless animals.

Taxidermy is an inherently weird art. At its most normal, it’s proof that you shot something and it just gets stranger from there. A moose’s head on a wall, we’re used to seeing. A moose’s head on a wall wearing sunglasses and a birthday hat, even, has been normalized by theme restaurants, but taken for what it is, it’s a pretty macabre custom. Although, a moose that got shot on his birthday isn’t even as morbid as a dead rabbit with antlers screwed into its head or its severed foot dyed pink on a set of car keys. It does, however, poke fun at death in a way that’s not only fascinating but has a certain degree of removal. 

Up until comparatively recently, humans had an intimate relationship with death. If you wanted bacon, you killed a pig. People died young of diseases now preventable. People literally dug holes for their own family members. A story my mother tells from her own mother’s childhood in Ireland involves her best friend dying of a fever and the little girl’s family displaying the body in their living room, as was tradition. Its amazing, too, how many of these stories involve people dying of fevers, of homesickness, of broken hearts. Some of that is the melodrama of the old world, and some of it was just the fact that you could be homesick, and also maybe step on a nail, and you were done for. In that world, taxidermy fits in with ease. Death was such a part of life that displaying it wasn’t appalling. 

My uncle is a big game hunter. He lives in Alaska, so hunting and fishing literally come with the territory. Mounted heads of elk and other big game line the walls, as well as a cougar rug on the floor of their living room. They seem right at home in the natural wood cabin. You know these animals are dead but looking into their glass doll eyes, they might as well be made of papier mache. It’s different with a cat, obviously. Since you presumably didn’t hunt your cat but you want to do something to commemorate him after he dies, presenting him curled up next to the fire might be more appropriate. Since they spend so much of their time asleep anyway, you might not even notice that a taxidermied cat in a natural-looking sleeping position wasn’t alive at all. Maybe your pet was more the adventurous type and something like this would be more suitable to their personality. 

The Artistic Taxidermy Portland Showroom is located at 5700 SE Foster Rd and offers a variety of custom taxidermy services, from life-sized and shoulder mounts to fish and waterfowl trophies perched on unique pieces of driftwood. Their website doesn’t specifically say anything about family members, be they a cat or a relative, so something like an antler lamp might be a more realistic statement piece. And it won’t ruin any dinner parties.