CATastrophic & SCANdalous (cat-scan.com)

Member Name: wiggglypufff

Product:	cat-scan.com
Date:	28/07/01 (890 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Non

Disadvantages: Not funny, Cruel

There has been the odd occasion where I’ve put things in my scanner that wouldn’t normally be put in a scanner. I would imagine I’m not alone in doing this. Out of plain and simple curiosity, you wonder how an object might come out. But, never have I been tempted to scan my cats.........

Cat-scan.com is a site dedicated to displaying pictures of cats. Not your conventional camera snap shot, but scanned images of cats. Yes, you read that right. People actually put their cats on a flatbed scanner and scan them!!

“Welcome to CliffyB's Cat-Scan!
Cat-Scan is home to people who love art as much as their cats. So much so, they combine the two! Every weekday we'll bring you the most hilarious cat scans available.”

The homepage, along with the above message, displays ‘The Daily Scan’ picture, and a little caption by Cliff and Kazi. Underneath is ’News’, in which Cliff informs us weekly, of goings on... “Okay, I feel bad. I've fallen in love with our dog, Charlie”. All I can add to that is a suggestion that Charlie keeps herself well away from Cliff’s scanner.

Then you have the rules for submitting scans to the site. Words of wisdom such as....

“Please avoid scanning the cat's eyes. Otherwise, the people who hate this site will have ammo to give me shit.”
• No mention of the fact that the whole scanning process would almost certainly distress, if not harm, the cat.

“Please make sure your cat is mostly CLEAN before scanning and sending. I really don't need to see Cat Dandruff or paws that have mud or feces on them.”
• I would prefer to think that cat owners would endeavor to do this anyway out of love for the animal, not in order to make pleasant scanning matter.

..... and the list of equally daft rules goes on. Including suggestions for making your scan unique with the addi
tion of props such as birds or mice.

Well, maybe I’m having a sense of humour bypass week, but the homepage alone was enough to tell me that I wasn’t going to be impressed with this site. As the owner of 5 very playful cats and 4 beautiful kittens, I know that you can capture the most bizarre pictures by the conventional camera method. Putting then on my scanner has never been, and will never be, on my agenda.

Anyway, back to the site. Should you want to see more, listed on the left hand side of the homepage are.....

“CATSCAN FRONT PAGE”
• The homepage where you are already

“HATE MAIL”
• The archive of emails that have been sent to Cliff with regard to the site. Not taken seriously, Cliff has inserted his answers (mostly sarcastic comments) into the text.

“SCANS ARCHIVE”
• 28 weeks worth of daily scans. Hard to believe that many people have actually subjected their cats to being scanned. None of the pictures I looked at were that interesting either.

“AWARDS AND PRESS”
• Website awards given to cat-scan.com such as “Cruel Site of the Day” and “Muehlke's Waste of Bandwidth Award”. Can’t really argue with those. But a newspaper article, from the Daily Telegraph????

“FORUMS”
• “Cat-Scan.com: Love it. Hate it. Talk about it here.” Amazingly there are nearly 100 members and hundreds of posts.

“STORE”
• You can purchase mugs, mousemats, and T-Shirts, if you really want to, but the shipping cost alone to the UK is $20, and the products range from $12.99 to $19.99

“LINKS”
• As the heading suggests, links to other cat related sites. Most as weird as cat-scan.com, but one was about pet care matters and worth a look.... www.peteducation.com

“Submit Cat Scans!”
&#
8226; Opens up your email so you can send a scanned cat picture. But I’d certainly not recommend doing that...

...what I would recommend is not bothering with this site at all. If the counter is accurately clocking up visitors, this site has already had over one and a half million people there. Don’t contribute to it reaching the two million mark.

Summary: