Still, even their own website acknowledges the dangers. Take a look at one of the letters they got on their feedback page:
From Thomas McMagus < [email protected]> Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001
While I believe you are well meaning, I think it highly irresponsible of you to give so many details about the procedures of feline molding. Sure you pay lip service to warning people without the proper training against attempting mammalian bonsai, but certainly you realize that most, if not all, young people have a mindset of "It can't happen to me." and are going to disregard the advice.
Let me relate my family's unfortunate experience, in hopes it will deter others from attempting to create their own amateur feline bonsai. It started innocently enough. Like so many children, our 14 year old daughter brought home a stray kitten and begged to keep it. Like so many parents, we consented, but with the usual admonishment that she had to take care of it. Of course, before long, she came to realize that it is no small matter to tend to a kitten's constant need for feeding and attention, not to mention the ancillary damages they can cause. The evening she came home from school and found one of her ballet slippers shredded on the night of her recital, was the last straw. We suggested taking the kitten to the Animal Rescue League. After that, we didn't see the kitten again, and assumed she had taken our advice.
Little did we know, that somehow, somewhere, she had come across information about the art of kitten bonsai and had decided it was the solution to her problems. (I don't think it was your web site that she got the information from, as this was several years ago and I presume predated the creation of your site.) She placed the kitten in a 1 qt mason jar, taking care to provide breathing and feeding tubes. She correctly super glued the kitten's rectum. Sadly, her vocabulary was not sufficiently developed to understand the meaning of "rectal diverticulum" and hence she did not realize anything was amiss when this failed to occur.
From what we have been able to gather from talking to her after the tragic accident, all seemed to be going well for the first month or so. The kitten had fully and evenly filled the confinement vessel. Then, one evening, wishing to "play" with her pet, she picked up the container. Apparently, the internal pressure had reached the bursting point and the slight jar of being picked up caused it to explode, hurtling glass shrapnel in all directions. My beautiful young daughter lost three fingers on her right hand, was blinded in her left eye and left with a long jagged scar across her left cheek. One minute a cheerleader and one of the most popular girls in her class - the next, a disfigured outcast.
The healing process was long and painful and the hospital costs soon exceeded the limits of our insurance coverage and became a financial burden. When she graduated, it quickly became clear it wasn't going to be any easier for her to find employment than it was going to be for her to attract a husband. She finally found work at Disneyland, as the greeter for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, but only after having her left leg amputated at the knee. (Another expensive consequence of this tragedy. We had to go all the way to Laos to find a "doctor" who was willing to amputate a healthy limb attached to a teenage girl. Then complications set in, the hospital bill went through the roof and our hapless child had to work off her treatment bills at a local brothel. It was a trying 16 months for us all.)
So the next time you are at Disneyland with your children and see a peg-legged, one-eyed pirate named Bambi, tell them, "That could be how you end up if you fool around with kitten bonsai."
I hope this will serve as a warning to all the young readers at your site who may be tempted to "experiment." And please, for the sake of the children, don't be so forth-coming about the actual techniques used in creating these art pets. Something so whimsical and delightful shouldn't be allowed to turn into a life altering tragedy for another unsuspecting family.
Sign me, A heart-broken father, Santa Cruz, CA
reply
Dear Thomas,
What a shocking cautionary tale! We can only offer our sincere condolences to your family, and hope your ghastly story serves as a lesson to all our readers that no material possession is worth a little girl's beauty, even a gorgeous bonsai kitten. We have a duty to our customers and hobbyists to preserve the information on our website as a resource for all, but we urge every parent out there to carefully monitor all of their children's animal experiments. The dangers are very real.