Taxidermy (and the connections that led us here...)

When Patches dies, I want to tan her hide --no, silly, not in that authoritarian "woodshed" sense-- just like people do to dead bears, tigers, and other safari animals they've never met nor loved. She's so dang pretty, I'd love to wake up looking at her on my wall (no, not mounted like a statue, that's just toooooo creepy, even for me!). People freak out when I tell them this... I don't quite get it :)
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The other day, I was talking to George about my love of furs, especially mink, especially in the form of stoles and muffs. I was recalling a particular stole that David owns, the dead animal has a clip under it's mouth so it can "bite" itself on the tail and remain positioned.
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Yesterday, George found such a stole! It was in his storage, it must have been his mother's. It was made from four full minks, claws and teeth intact. It even had the mouth clippy thingie! There was also a beautiful white mink coat in the trunk, which is now *mine!* I walked around for hours just touching it and appreciating it! :::momentary break, gotta touch the coat, aahh, much better::: He also found a fox fur, just the fur, nothing done to it since tanning. I showed it to the kids as an example of what I want to do with Patches; they were grossed out! I tried the "but no one loved this fox as much as we love Patches and yet someone thought it important to keep it's fur" to no avail.
The conversation grew from there... I asked Hannah to carry the mink coat downstairs for me, but she refused to touch it. She doesn't like the idea of someone using animal fur. I talked about how the animal didn't need the fur any more, as it was dead, and isn't it wonderful to continue to be purposeful even dead? She didn't buy it! She did concede that it *might* be okay to use animal skins if indeed you ate the animal, but to kill an animal just for it's fur was sick and wrong.
We're laying in bed, me, Hannah & Patches and Hannah brings up the topic again. She really wants Patches' ashes to keep with Daddy's, maybe spread some out in California where Patches was born. I came up with a great design for a muff of Patches, a wrap-around so her head would be laying over the top, as I slid my hands inside. "Oh MOM, why don't you just string her up and put one hand in her mouth and the other up her butt!" "Great idea!" I reply. "How about making slippers, like Daddy wanted to do?" she asked. "Sure! Her head on one and her butt on the other!" Nope, she didn't like that one either...
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I dunno, maybe I'll just have her cremated and we'll just learn to live with the memory of her softness. I'll be sad, but mostly because my kitty is gone, not that I didn't get to keep her fur.