Bonsai Kitten

[Sattua]

Okay, on another forum I read somebody has pointed out the website

http://www.bonsaikitten.com

I don’t believe it’s real. I argue that the superglue would only hold for a few days (epithelia do, after all, shed). Another person who is a nurse (but can’t spell the word “surgically”) claims there is a glue which would hold indefinitely. Huh? What? Anyway, how would you get the kitten through the narrow little bottleneck?

So tell me about the glue. Then tell me about the kittens.

Thanks!

[Gunslinger]

IT’S A JOKE! A particularly sick joke (I like it :D), but a joke nonetheless.

[Sublight]

Relax, none of it is real.

No glue (not even temporary), no surgery, no kitty cubes.

For further details, worship at the shrine of Snopes. Enjoy.
http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/outrage/bonsai.htm

–sublight.

[SmackFu]

But is it possible?

[Ross]

AAaaaargh. This morning I picked up a copy of METRO (a free newspaper you get on buses and trains in the UK). It has a horrified article entitled “Bonsai Kitten Website ‘So Cruel’ Says Charity”. I really had to calm down a bit after reading the article. I kept going from laughter to indignance. I guess the only thing worth mentioning is that theoretically even though it IS a joke there are those who would consider it highly offensive anyway. But for pity’s sake…

It’s amazing how quickly I become intolerant of misunderstanding in others… when I’ve got a cold and my throat hurts. Sorry! Love ya Metro!

[Derleth]

SmackFu:
No, I don’t think so. Here’s why:

Animals, as in the rather complex forms of life we routinely consider animals (no cheaters like slime molds), are centralized animals with highly specialized tissues in structures that must be maintained. Plants, on the other hand, are not. Plants have not brains, neither do they have hearts. One branch is pretty much like any other, one leaf is pretty much identical to any other, and all of them can be regrown quickly. If an animal loses a limb, odds are the limb will not be regrown. Too complex of a task, far better just to create scar tissue and prevent blood loss and infection. There are exceptions, but not among mammals.

Also, sized-down animals are not usually healthy animals. The simplicity of plants allows for a high degree of fault-tolerance, including the ability to be tiny. Dwarfism in plants can be a good adaptation to limited resources. Dwarfism in animals can lead to death. Especially any sort of artificial dwarfism.

IANAB (I Am Not A Biologist AND I Am Not A Botanist.)

[Bob_Scene]

I hope after the FBI is finished investigating those bonsai kitten perverts, they go after these brazen snuff-film producers next:

http://www.sfdt.com/

[absoul]

Originally posted by Sattua
…how would you get the kitten through the narrow little bottleneck?

Well, that’s what the Alessi shoehorn is for.
This part about air holes just kills me… “you’d be surprised how many amateurs forget this detail and wind up with a cold, hard kitty in the morning!”

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

[patient sigh]
I can’t believe there are still people out there who don’t know how the kitten gets into the bottle.

The answer is, you build the kitten in the bottle. So the whole kitten doesn’t have to fit through the neck, only the tiny pieces of the kitten, one at a time, with really long tweezers.

Always happy to help fight a little ignorance…

---

Seriously, could it work? No.

1. They don’t mention urine disposal, only feces. The kitten would have to have a urinary catheter. I’d think they’d run into infection problems.

2. A cat’s bones are genetically programmed to grow to a certain size. This–

However, the flexibility of the kitten’s skeleton means that if the bones are gently warped at this early age, they can be molded into any desired shape. At Bonsai Kitten, we achieve this by placing the kitten into a rigid vessel soon after birth, and allowing the young cat to grow out its formative time entirely within this container. The kitten essentially grows into the shape of the vessel!

–would not work. Just squashing the kitten into a small space wouldn’t make its bones stop growing. They show a kitten being put into a glass jar exactly the same size as it is. Within a month, it would be too big for its jar. Eventually I suppose the growing cat would be suffocated by the inability of its ribs to expand.

3. This–

As the kitten’s body is still developing, a natural rectal diverticulum will soon form around the tube…

–makes it sound like a diverticulum is a natural, normal, thing. It isn’t. This is not the same thing as a colostomy bag, as the website suggests. A colostomy bag is attached to skin tissue, which heals up around it.

A diverticulum is a pouch in the bowel wall, not a connecting tube. And it’s not normal, or desirable.

http://womenshealth.about.com/health/womenshealth/library/bldiver.htm

4. The whole problem of fecal disposal. Your bowels move because of muscular contractions in the rectum that move the feces down and out of the system, and solid feces would just clog up the tube’s opening. So you’d need some kind of suction to pull the feces out of the tube’s opening and into a collection bag, and it would probably not be a good thing to have suction sucking up into the kitten’s anus (that’s an awful sentence but I don’t know how else to put it).

Unless of course the kitten had diarrhea.

Google. “critical care nurse bowel incontinent”

http://www.critical-care-nurse.org/AACN/jrnlccn.nsf/GetArticle/DepartmentFour174?OpenDocument

Fecal incontinence in critical care patients is usually manifested as diarrhea.

Three methods are used to protect skin from diarrhea: diapers, rectal Foley catheters, and rectal pouches.

Now aren’t you glad you asked?

[Irishman]

Sattua said:

Huh? What? Anyway, how would you get the kitten through the narrow little bottleneck?

It’s not a narrow little bottle neck. The glass jar for the photos has a very wide opening. The kitten crawls halfway in. A little extra shove and…

So tell me about the glue. Then tell me about the kittens.

Superglue was developed for use as a threadless suture - sealing cuts and stuff. I think the premise is that by sealing it, the skin would grow closed, like a hole in your ear lobe or tongue, etc. Not sure that is what would happen, as the anus is a natural opening. Don’t know about glue that holds for longer periods of time.

Ducky, you beat me to it. SmackFu, no it isn’t possible. Okay, constraining the body parts can make them grow deformed - see Japanese foot binding. However, as pointed out, the cats will grow a certain amount, and would probably suffocate.

The diverticulum thing is wrong. It would be better to just leave the anus exposed.

from the site:

At only a few weeks of age, a kitten’s bones have not yet hardened and become osseous. They are extremely soft and
springy. In fact, if you take a week-old kitten and throw it to the floor, it will actually bounce!

This seems rather outlandish. If the kitten is likely to bounce, I would suspect it has more to do with the natural shock absorbers and springs inherent in the kitten design, i.e. legs.

Okay, in principle you could grow deformed cats by some sort of binding method. Doing so with a jar would not really work because you probably can’t stunt the growth enough without suffocating the cat.

And yes, I find the idea appalling.

[Irishman]

Cooincidentally, after reading this yesterday, last night my local newsfotainment program did a story on Bonsai Kitty. They got the info correct that it was a joke by MIT students, but then went off on a treacly little piece talking to a local girl who wanted a cat and how she didn’t think it was right.

The show said they used “computer morphing” techniques to make the images. I think they are implying it was something like that program emailed around where you could stretch the faces of Al Gore and George W. Bush into funny shapes. Oh no, that’s not funny at all, poor guys might get stuck like that!