dissecting cats

upstatenygirl, LPN · May 2, 2011

anyone have any advice on how to get through a&p with the dissecting of cats? i am a huge cat lover and am already stressing over this. surely someone else has felt this way. there are no other schools around here that use anything else except for cats. any advice would be most helpful. thanks.

i haven't started the nursing program yet and was not aware that they disected things---especially cats : (

are these cats that were put in the pound, didn't get adopted, and were put to sleep? thats sad. :crying2:

think about how many cats they are actually killing!

i have a cat and he is like my child.

upstatenygirl, LPN · May 2, 2011

i liked it! actualy it is not as bad as it sounds, they smell sort of funky, but you get used to it...
you have to skin them also!

how would you feel if it was a dog?

upstatenygirl, LPN · May 2, 2011

i totally agree with this! i work in the veterinary field at the present moment. the cats that are used in anatomy classes are generally purchased form dealers who's business it is to provide cats for students to dissect. they are killed and then put in formaldehyde immediately after death. i can say that i know of no animal shelter that has facilites that do this in orange county, ca. this is not always the case in every state perhaps, but most often, the cats on the table have been killed specifically for the purpose of dissection.
i don't know where everyone lives, but at santa ana community college, they have a few anatomy classes that only use cadavers. :) and rest assured, the person on the table being dissected willed their body to science!
as future nurses, i feel we should stand up for this unnecessary abuse of animals. further, we are human nurses, so really dissecting cats (yes i know their anatomy is very similar in respects) is outdated. human nurses should dissect human cadavers!
just my thoughts .

:yeah: thank you for stating what i was thinking! why doesn't everyone else feel that this is wrong??? heartless!

upstatenygirl, LPN · May 2, 2011

yeah the more i think about it, the more uspet i become. cats cannot choose to give their lives for the education of future nurses.
i have chosen to take anatomy at a school that uses human cadavers. this college will be a longer drive for me, but i don't think that i can ethically dissect a cat that was killed for this purpose.
it's too bad shelters don't turn over the euthanized strays..they have to be bled, then packed in formaldehyde...the shelters don't have the time or resouces to do this, sadly. hence why companies exsist to provide cats to colleges. hopefully, someday, this will not be the standard for anatomy classes.
i find it disheartning that some other people say to "buck up" and that as nurses we will see many sad and disturbing things. i could not disagree more. first off i think that as nurses we should seek to help those in less fortunate positions...what is more innocent than a cat killed for a human anatomy class?? i work at an animal hospital and see sad and disturbing things; it has never gotten easier...and if it does, that is the day my compassion and empathy die...
it's true that we will see many sad and disturbing things as nurses, but i know i won't ever see a person killed for medical school students to dissect! life is sometimes very difficult and full of sorrow, but we should seek to lessen this as nurses, not contribute to it...
just a thought!

:yelclap: i totally agree!!!

upstatenygirl, LPN · May 2, 2011

shananiganswi, thanks for the link for animallearn! i posted it on facebook. i would love to advocate for them.

akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P · May 2, 2011

I've had A&P labs with cadavers and with cats. While the cadaver is better, cats do have very similar general structures and will help get you to understand how the organs are interconnected. While using a computer model is OK and will get you a similar level of understanding, actual dissection will show you that there will be variations in the anatomy that you won't see in an idealized computer model. Also, its somewhat difficult to visualize a 3-D object when you see it in a 2-D presentation. Hopefully advancements in 3-D screen technology will help provide a better sense of depth.

A similar concern is that using human cadavers is very expensive. Using cat models is far less so. I personally still think it's a great thing to be able to have a cadaver lab instead of an animal lab.

futrn · May 2, 2011

This is a horrible practice that really needs to stop... :crying2:

lrlat · May 2, 2011

What helped me get through it ...as a cat lover also, was to remember the "end goal". While it is certainly distasteful, and sort of traumatic , at first, remember that you are doing it to learn. A photo in a book only goes so far, as well as "computer graphics". In the end it is very helpful to study the various structures in this manner....my biggest complaint...the structures themselves are so very small. Good luck and you will be okay....breathe in breathe out

leenak · May 2, 2011

I have 2 cats and I had a cat in high school. In high school, we dissected cats. Prior to our dissection, we were told where the cats came from and at the time, they were cats that were going to be put to sleep otherwise. Our teacher gave us a lecture on the importance of spaying/neutering your pets and also told us that we needed to respect the cats and not mutilate them in any way. I don't think my college does any dissections from the people I've talked to so we have done away with it at least. I know Johns Hopkins is involved in finding alternatives to animal testing. http://caat.jhsph.edu/

JGoodrichEMT · May 2, 2011

We just finished dissection this week in A&P. It was not fun but my best advice is to cover the cat's head with paper towels and to use masks with either Vick's Vapor rub or mint spirits to combat the smell of the preserving fluids. I have two cats at home so this was tough especially since the cat I dissected was similar to one of my two at home. As long as I focused on the task at hand and didn't think too long about what I was actually dissecting, it was easier to make it through the whole process.

futrn · May 2, 2011

I have 2 cats and I had a cat in high school. In high school, we dissected cats. Prior to our dissection, we were told where the cats came from and at the time, they were cats that were going to be put to sleep otherwise. Our teacher gave us a lecture on the importance of spaying/neutering your pets and also told us that we needed to respect the cats and not mutilate them in any way. I don't think my college does any dissections from the people I've talked to so we have done away with it at least. I know Johns Hopkins is involved in finding alternatives to animal testing. http://caat.jhsph.edu/

thanks for this link! very interesting! =)

purplesteth · May 2, 2011

TBH I would refuse to do it. I understand that dissection is useful, but I don't think it's essential (others I'm sure will disagree). I feel perfectly prepared for my A&P exam without having done any dissection; there are so many other ways to prepare for exams, using models and other technology that do not involve killing animals. It's time schools moved into the 21st century, for heaven's sake, not to mention steamrolling over the ethics of those who see killing animals for academic purposes as unnecessary and are uncomfortable with the idea.