In a recent interview with FMT, Anna, who goes only by her first name, spoke of the bond she currently shares with her pet cat and soulmate “Dudey”.
“A few years back, I started thinking about what I would do if she passed away and the idea of burying or cremating her was just unfathomable. For me, I’ve always had that feeling that I’d have to preserve her.”
Anna related how Dudey is almost like a permanent fixture in her life, always there for her as she potters about in her home.
“When I come back home from work, she is always there with me. While I work (from home), she’s sitting right beside me. We have this cute bond where I think we understand each other,” she told FMT, beaming.
Knowing the dreaded day will come someday, Anna, 35, decided to learn taxidermy, the art of preserving dead animals so that they are physically present in the lives of those they leave behind.
She took to the internet to research the process and got right down to experimenting with the knowledge she learned.
Then one day, she came upon an old blog post of a veterinarian named Dr Andy Norman who was preserving an elephant for a museum. Beside herself with excitement, she phoned him immediately and they met the next week to discuss the business of taxidermy.
So taken up was she with the art form that the two became business partners as he took her under his wing. That was three years ago and today, Anna is a full-fledged taxidermist still deeply in-love with her work.
During a recent visit to Norman’s veterinary clinic, she took FMT through the entire process of preserving a bird, starting with the first step – that of skinning the dead animal.
“The goal is to dissect from the centre of the keel bone all the way up to the neck. The skin is super thin and I want to keep the body as a whole,” she said.
She explained that once a precise dissection was made, borax, which is a preservative agent, is used to help with the skinning process.
“After that, I will focus on fleshing and that is where I remove the remaining flesh and fat that is still on the skin and as you can see there is a little injury mark (due to an accident) which I will also fix before I start stuffing.”
She explained that coconut husk, cotton and wires were then used to stuff the animal so it retained its original shape. The last step is mounting, she said, the process in which an animal is set in a desired pose.
Anna pointed out that depending on the size of the animal, the entire process from skinning to stuffing alone could take up to five hours. A fully completed work of taxidermy – meaning that it is ready to be placed in a glass display case – can take up to two weeks.
She said one of the biggest misconceptions about being a taxidermist is that “they are all murderers”.
“That is absolutely not true. We actually love animals (whether) dead or alive. All animals that come to us are already dead. Our job is to preserve it and provide an alternative for people out there to honour their pets,” she said.
She said that while some Malaysians were open to the idea of taxidermy as an art form, just as many “freak out” at the very mention of it.
“(In terms of) my parents, they were pretty much against it in the beginning but they are starting to see the beauty behind it. I feel like I have influenced them slowly into liking what I do. It’s better now,” she said.
She said taxidermy is a dying art form in Malaysia, and that she would very much like to change it. “It will also be nice if in the future every single house in Malaysia has one item of taxidermy. That will be a dream come true for me,” she chuckled.
Despite taxidermy enjoying a rather niche market in Malaysia, Anna is excited at the prospect of teaching others about this art form in her upcoming workshop.