A couple of years ago I went to this pet store on the top floor of a local department store. Not your best bet to get a pet (ha ha nice channelling of Dr. Suess there) but I was kind of curious about if they just sold pet food or had actual animals.
I got to the top floor which was actually the roof and walked across to the little shack-type room. As I walked up to the shanty-shop I was taken aback by the fact that they were tasteless enough to have a fur welcom mat. To me that's pretty icky. I have a cousin who's ex-boyfriends mother skinned their dear cat after it passed away and made it into a wall-hanging.
Yeah. Kind of wierd. My aunt said it was actually quite tastefully done. When she said that, I was thankful not to be drinking a cola because snorting that out of one's nose in a fit of laughter is painful. I have never seen a picture of this wall-hangning so I will reserve judgement about how tasteful it could possibly be. But at least you can see how I could see it being within the realm of tasteless probability to have a pet mat.
I remember thinking how surprised I was that this form of pet-art (?) worship? made it to Japan and into some dinky pet store in Tokyo. Then the mat turned it head to me and blinked! Oh, my god. It was almost worse than the poor kitty being lovingly made into a mat to remember it by. This thing literaly flowed over the doorstep it was lying on.
It made me really angry that a pet-store would let a cat get that fat. Maybe the person who ran the pet-shop owned it and crated it into work on a dolly. I don't know. Language barrier at the time.
Not to long after that the pet shop closed. I was just at that station department store today and saw that the elevator add for the pet shop had been elminated and my husband commented on it and that reminded me of the mat cat.