Senior Paige Groves took anatomy class to prepare for her plans to pursue a medical profession. By dissecting a cat, Groves will come to understand the basic workings of the human body.
“I thought it would be nice to know the basic human anatomy,” Groves said. “Obviously we can’t dissect a real human. It’s cool [to dissect a cat] because their organ structure kind of resembles ours.”
Science Department head, Michelle Fagan, and her third and fourth block anatomy class’s started dissecting cats Oct. 31 in order to mimic an autopsy of a human. The class uses euthanized cats from the pound where no owners claimed nor adopted them.
The anatomy classes must skin their cat to study the epidermis, the first system of the human body that the students studied.
“We dissect each system as we study [the human equivalent],” Fagan said.
The class has mixed feelings about dissecting cats. Students either find the dissection interesting or disgusting. Senior Marissa Bergere wasn’t thrilled to dissect the cat.
“It’s pretty awful actually,” Bergere said. “It smells like puke and clorox mixed together. It’s about as bad I expected it to be. ”
Each group named their cat beforehand to tell the cats apart from one another, but also for sentimental reasons.
“We named ours Jack,” Bergere said, “but it turned out to be a girl, so it’s Jackie. I wanted to say ‘Hey Jack’ like Duck Dynasty.”
Seniors Jamie Anderson and Savannah Paleschic feel quite different than their classmates about cutting open the cat.
“It’s really not that bad,” Anderson said. “I was dreading [skinning the cat], but now I just think it’s easy, and interesting. Everyone else was kind of grossed out so I just decided to do it.”
Paleschic says she would have taken up the scalpel if she didn’t think that Anderson would be better at it.
“I was never really dreading it. It’s already dead,” Paleschic said. “It doesn’t feel anything so it’s fun to do it. It can’t feel pain and we’re learning something.”
