Grieving woman says 'dispose of cat however you want'; BF gets it stuffed. AITA?

When a beloved pet dies, it's understandable if the last thing you want to think about is the disposal of the body. For one woman on Reddit, who was out of town when her cat passed away, she left the decision to her boyfriend. The result was not great.

"AITA for giving my friend my girlfriend's deceased cat for taxidermy after she said I could do whatever I wanted with the body?"

My (35M) girlfriend's (30F) cat recently passed away. Unfortunately my girlfriend's grandmother was terminally ill at the time and she lived abroad, so my girlfriend was away when her cat passed.

It was really unexpected and her cat suddenly declined days after she left. I asked my girlfriend how she would like me to dispose the body, and whether she wanted ashes or anything.

She said she did not care as she does not believe in afterlife and that I should just dispose it however is most convenient for me. She did not want to see the body as she was really grieving.

When my friend heard about it, he asked if he could have the body, my friend has always been fond of her cat whenever he came over and found him very majestic. The cat was a maine coon and they are very big for house cats.

I agreed and my friend paid for an expensive taxidermy and keeps the body as a decorative item in his house.

I told my girlfriend that my friend disposed of it for me. However after my girlfriend got back, my friend's sister mentioned the taxidermy to her as they are friends and did not know she was unaware of it.

My girlfriend has since been furious at me and my friend is now also upset at me saying I should have checked with her. But i did tell her I gave the body to him and I thought she did not care about how the body was disposed. AITA here?

Cat people went off in the comments.

From SolidBones:

YTA. You didn't dispose of it. You repurposed it. These things are fundamentally different. She didn't want her cat's body put to use, she wanted it gone. Apologize.

From fizzwitz:

Okay, OP. Let’s pretend it was an honest mistake. The thought of either of my cats existing as stuffed animals sickens me. Sickens me. I adore them and I will be heartbroken if/when they go.

So when you do something that devastates your gf and increases her heartbreak: You fix it. And you apologize. We all screw up. All of us. People who aren’t utter AHs own it, however unpleasant it is, and deal. You aren’t. YTA start to finish.

From silfy_star:

YTA. This whole post creeps me tf out… taxidermy is fine and all, but you chose her dead cat whom she even told you that “she did not want to see the body” yet kept and got stuffed?. Bruh

From Glittering_knave:

YTA. If seeing the body is too upsetting, and your GF wanted you to dispose of it, how did you think taxidermy was an appropriate use? Dispose of it means bury it cremate it, not turn the upsetting corpse into a statue!

From RedditStaffCantCode:

YTA taxidermy is not a typical way to dispose of a body. It is, in fact, the opposite of disposing of a body. It's preserving a body. She asked you to dispose of the body, and you didn't.

You gave it away to someone else to manipulate for their purposes. You should have specifically clarified if taxidermy was okay first, since all you had permission to do was dispose of the body - not give it to someone to display permanently.

From Warm_Water_5480:

OP is a 0 on the emotional intelligence scale.

Woof.