Friday 30 September 2011

Pet Mummification; Loving or Gruesome?

Cagliastro said her mummification practice is "art" and "scientific."
When I saw a big mummified tiger that opened his mouth widely exposing his sharp teeth in a zoo, I was overwhelmed by his fear and panache. Several years after that when I visited my friend’s house, I happened to meet another innocent deer that was hung on the wall boosting spread her antlers, I could not watch her longer than 5 seconds because pitiful feeling waved in my heart. Yesterday, while surfing the internet, I read an article about mummification of pets by chance. The thing which interested me and made me frown was the word Pets not the word mummification.


The NYDaily News reports that Queen Nefer-kitty: Expert makes dead pets into mummies, pyramids sold separately” A former forensic reconstructionist and embalmer named Cagliastro carries out her work all day which she makes mummies in her lab New York. She has mummified pets from small ones to big ones, such as frogs, birds, guinea pigs, cats, bunnies, and even armadillos, and so on. "To me, mummification is the ultimate honor because there is nothing that would keep your loved one around longer," she said. The price of the mummification is between $800 and $4,000 and a growing number of moaning owners want to seek for her. About 15 years ago, after five or so year's effort, she developed a complex salt formula which is a key secret to mummify pets. The mummies are put with a scrolled up piece of parchment inside, and then wrapped with linen and painted with semi-precious metals, and at last, decorated heirloom jewelry. Caglosastro who experimented on chicken wings at first also plans to mummify humans. She also opens classes at the Observatory in Gowanus, Briiklyn for those who want to learn how it works. "I'm fascinated by this thing called death," Cagliastro said. "It's sort of the only thing that everyone experiences.


While I was reading this article, I thought about what real love about pets is when they are dead. My result of this is that it is not definetely to mummify them. I also considered this question on the side of those who hope to mummify their pets. They will want to keep their dead pets at hand to remind them as Cagliastro said above. However, to leave dead ones at their side is just to show human's greed not to express love about pets. They just want to show how much they loved their pets before. I think that they are similar to the people who hung the deer' heads on the wall in the way that both of them are showing off themselves.


I called my sister who raises a dog and loves him very much like her children. I asked her if she want to mummify her pet after he dies. Her answer didn't deviate from my expectation. She said that to do so is that she Kills a dog after death and it is unnatural thing. She added to see the fixed eyes and to touch the hard body is eldritch and if she mummified her dog, she might want to forget her dog after time goes by. I strongly agree with her and also, I am courious about what my classmates think of this like.


References

Nelson, K. (2011, September 25). Queen Nefer-kitty: Expert makes dead pets into mummies, pyramids sold separately. NYDaily News. Retrieved September 30 from http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/09/25/2011-09-25_wrapped_up_in_death_shell_make_your_pet_into_a_mummy.html#ixzz1ZFWInEtd

19 comments:

  1. I think that making a dead animal into a mummy is normal because some owners may want to stay with their pet as long as possible, even if it is dead. For example, when my cat died, my family thought we would be frozen and stored, but we can not do it, for we have no fridge for the cat. Finally, we decided to buried him at the front yard, made the grave by white stone and planted a small bamboo which he like so much beside the grave.

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  2. This is interesting news for me because I really love pets, but I don't think I'll make my pets mummify although I love them. For this reason, I think death is normal, everyone have to die. Nobody can live forever. I think we should understand nature and live with it and I don't think mummification of pets is a good idea to do.

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  3. Great title - "Queen Nefer-kitty: Expert makes dead pets into mummies, pyramids sold separately".

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  4. I'm so shocked of this news. Mummify companions!?!
    I totally agree with you,Sunny, that people who want to mummify pets are similar to who hung the deer' heads on the wall. They act like those animals are only things as the other household stuffs! In addition, I like your sister words that "to do so is that she Kills a dog after death and it is unnatural thing"
    Personally, I hate the word "pet" because for me it means like we own that animal, we are the boss. In my opinion, animals are not ours, there are 2 dogs in my family which I never chained them, I act and think of them as my family members or companions.

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  5. My family is much like Preaw's. We have always had pets - mainly dogs, but also horses and birds. When they die, it is upsetting. We give them a nice burial, which is sort of farewell that allows us to move on with our lives, and generally get a new pet of the same sort. At the moment, there are four or five dogs, ranging from small terriers to a large beagle, a horse and some birds at my mother's home. And that's not counting the poultry and livestock. (My family are mainly sugar producers, but we also raise animals for our own consumption - all free range, natural, fresh and healthy.)

    I don't think I would want the mummified body of my pet hanging around forever. It seems to me better to have a farewell ceremony and then move on.

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  6. Sunny's vocabulary choice also prompted me to do a little research: you might have noticed that the last entry on the list of "Useful Links" on the right is for the Google Books Ngram viewer. This is a neat tool that tells you how commonly a word, or more usefully a selection of words, has been used in written English over the past couple of centuries by examining Google's vast corpora of English.

    You might like to click here to see the results for "eldritch,strange,frightening". It's a neat tool, brought to you be modern technology.

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  7. I also like Job's comment, which raises the important moral question of what we may rightly do with animals, of how humans may justly use them, and what we may not do to or with them.

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  8. This news surprises me a lot. The question in my mind pop up "Do people who love pets really want to mummify their pets?". I asked my friend who loves cat very much with the same question as Sunny. My friend says that although she loves cat very much but she does not want to keep cadavers of their pets. She wants to keep the memorable pictures of them when they are alive instead pet's mummies. She also adds pets does not like a kind of furniture that shows how many pets you have fed or how much you love them.

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  9. My mother told me that when I was a child, own house had dogs but I can't remember. I know someone who have pet, they really love them. I think they have an own way to farewell them. For me, if I have a pet, I will not mummify them. I think it likes hurt them again. So, just keep them in memory and let it go on natural way.

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  10. I have heard some people process their relatives' ashes to be a ring stud.
    This is a different way to miss.
    As I do not like to take pictures in travel, because those images are all in my mind, to become a part of my life.

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  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  12. Thank you Peter,
    I checked the site you recommended, and I want to change the word, but I will keep it on my blogger for my classmates. As learners who study English as the second language, we have difficulties on choosing the right words. You reminded me of that point again.

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  13. Sunny,
    Please don't change the words.
    Eldritch does sound a little odd, but mainly because it's almost normally used with a noun, not as a stand alone adjective.

    The OALD advises that it's a literary word, not one in ordinary use.

    It's still a good word; I like it.

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  14. Preaw,
    I welcomed your comment even though your opinion is different from mine because you confirmed the truth that some people around me want to mummify their pets to me. Moreover, I think your family had a reasonable choice instead of keeping him/her in the freezer.

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  15. I wonder what the pet owners feel when they see their pets in mummy. For me, I really love my dogs but I do not prefer to mummify them. I would feel sad every times that I see them without life. So I totally agree with Sunny's view.

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  16. For many years ago, my family has not any pet because it has not sure for us to raise it well enough. Besides, we found that a pet's death caused depression to us. To avoid facing these uneasiness, we have decide not to have some pets anymore.

    Unless pet-lovers can accept the emotion of the pet loss, they should deny raising anything at the beginning. Mummification sounds strange and unnatural, same as the Sunny's opinion.

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  17. Plan,
    I like your sensible approach. I think that far too many people, especially in cities, get pets that they cannot possibly care for properly. That is not only foolish, it's cruel, inhumane and bad. (I'm not using bad in the vague and rather meaningless way in which words such as good, great, interesting, awful, and so on are often used.)

    My family has always had pets, but we can care for them all well, having both the know-how and the means to do that.

    It makes me angry seeing abandoned animals living on the streets in misery because irresponsible idiots bought them because they looked cute or their children wanted them, and then they cruelly threw them out when they got tired of them.
    Sensible, responsible, decent people do not do things like that. Or do they?

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  18. Peter,
    Your family is so lucky because there are enough time and an area to take care your pets. Many people living in a city would rather have had some pets because of constraints of time and space.

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