Feral Cat Handbag

With feral cats out of control. We can only hope this trend setting Kiwi’s latest art work takes off here in Australia.

Maybe you’ve seen purses made from snakeskin on the catwalk, but Claire Third has created a wholenew style: she has made a purse usinga cat.

The Christchurch, New Zealand artist and taxidermistsourced the bag’s material, a ginger tomcat, from the side of a country road. It was dead when she found it. She kept the dead catin her freezer for three months while she looked for the owner. When no oneclaimed the body, she made it into a purse.

The bag sold on the New Zealand Trade Me website for $250.Reactions in the Q&Asection of the website were polarized.

There was also some dark humour in reaction to the cat bag in the Q&A section of Trademe.co.nz

Third spoke withAs It Happenshost Carol Off:

Carol Off:Why did you decide to include the cat’s face on the purse?

Claire Third:When I found the cat, he was dead on the side of the road. I found him and I thought that’s a shame, what can I do with this situation? He’d been really badly injured, obviously, he was dead, and he had a really good face, and that’s what I could work with. So I took that opportunity and ran with it, basically.

CO:Is it possible that this was somebody’s pet?

CT:You know, I’ve had a lot of flak about this. I would doubt very much it was anybody’s pet, it was in the middle of the countryside. I would say he was pretty feral. He looked feral, he was skinny and had that look.

CO:Have you made handbags out of dead animals before?

CT:Yeah, I have. I’ve made handbags out of other cats, admittedly I just used a little patch of fur. It’s quite nice when you’re out with your handbag, and um, I’m an anxious person, it’s nice to touch your handbag. It’s like taking your friend out with you, kind of.

CO:Can you understand that some people might find it offensive when a cat is turned into a fashion accessory?

CT:I can understand why they find it offensive, but it isn’t a pet, that’s the thing. It’s a wild feral animal that decimates our native bird population, so, that’s the actuality of it. I never, ever do pets.