I think that all of us will have heard about the helicopter cat created by the Dutch artist Bart Jansen. So far we have had reactions from outrage, to shock, to rambunctious applause. But what do we think of the cat really?
First of all, let’s get the story out of the way. The story is that Mr. Jansen’s cat was run over by a car. So naturally that made him into a pancake cat. So the pancake cat would have normally being buried with much sadness and despair. Instead of this, Mr. Jansen had a wonderful idea: he decided to make his cat into a flying helicopter by stuffing him and attaching motors. He can now be controlled by remote control, as well as being able to fly around the room and scare small children.
So this was then posted onto the wonderful world of the Internet and then it went viral and here we are. Major news stations like the BBC and CNN, as well as newspapers like the Daily Mail, are picking it up and there are now talks of selling it. In fact, there’s a bid of 100,000 Euros on the table for the whole thing; although I wouldn’t touch it personally as knowing my luck I’d end up buying it and then the Euro would collapse making it completely worthless.
The Dutch government hasn’t taken helicopter cat as well as everybody was hoping though, as it has written to a number of arts fairs in protest. A number of irritating activists have also put graffiti over some art buildings that says: “Kill the animal killers!” (in Dutch obviously) Now, I can’t help but see the logical flaw in this statement. Firstly, he didn’t kill Orville the cat, he merely did what any taxidermist did, and then arguably went too far. Secondly, what are they going to do? Are they going to start attacking drivers of cars who accidentally run small, furry animals over? I highly doubt it.
Idiots aside, is helicopter cat ethical? My answer is that it’s ethical because what we have to remember is that the cat was dead. He didn’t kill his cat or damage it in any way. He merely had it stuffed then altered it. Stuffing a family pet is common practice all over the world and few people complain about it. So what’s wrong with this? Is it due to the fact that Orville had a motor added to him? Or is it due to the fact that some people are just jealous of success in this sort of thing? I believe that it’s a combination of both.
Whenever something becomes really successful there are always those who complain about it. These people are miserable and just love to complain about nothing. They are always there and they should be completely ignored. Now, the subject of adding a motor to the cat is a little more genuine. I can completely understand the view from animal lovers that it’s a bit disrespectful to the cat. Completely understandable and I’m not going to fault people for that.
Whatever you happen to think about Orville the cat, on a motor, you all have to agree that it’s pretty damn creative and is an amusing distraction from the monotony of daily life.