Cat Dissections...Gross

Yes ladies and gentlemen, this week in A&P, I will get the amazing and rare opportunity to...dissect a cat. Words cannot convey the depths of which I am NOT looking forward to this. I hat lab in general...I espicially hate lab when it involves cutting into real specimens of things.
However, I'll have to suck it up for a few reasons-
1) I need a decent grade to start the accelerated nursing program
2) I have already made a name for myself as a big DORK and can't afford to further cement this impression
3) The teacher is already somewhat annoyed with my...lets say "goofyness" and I don't want to worsen things.

If you are wondering what has led to the aforementioned conditions listed in #2 and #3 I'll give you a brief example...

Last week we had a lab test. Lab tests consist of there being about 30 stations set up around the classroom...each containing microscope, model, human bone, or skelaton. Next to each "thing" there is are a couple of questions such as "what is this structure?" ect. On the actual specimen the teacher has a white tag with an arrow pointing to exactly what she is wanting an anwer to.
Well, on question # 43 when I rotated to the station I saw that it was a skelaton question to answer and the skelaton was in front of me. The question read "What structure connects here...the tag is located on the left arm". Well, I looked and looked. Couldn't see a tag on the left arm anywher. What the heck? I cocked my head sideways...I walked around the back of skelaton...I finally out of desperation picked up the skelaton's arm....furiously looking for the tag with its arrow...I was running out of time (we only have a minute at each station). Then out of the cornor of my eye...I saw it....the white tag...in plain view...attached to the other arm. I had been looking on the right arm all this time instead of the left. Embarrassed, I quickly scribbled the answer and hoped no one saw. But I could tell the teacher was watching. And she has NO sense of humor.

Add that to the previous week when we were studying bones and I brought a bag of chips. Okay, so I assumed that all the bones we were passing back and forth were replicas...synthetic....fake. As I examined each bone, put it back, and happily munched on my chips, a girl walked by and said "You know those are real...right?" What??? Surely she was mistaken! I called the teacher over and quickly asked "Are these real?"
"Yes" she said looking at me as though I was somehow the stupidest person ever created for not having realized this before.
Seriously, I had been eating and touching real dead peoples bones...AT THE SAME TIME! YUCK!
I wanted to barf my chips up. Thank God for Germ-X...

So, back to next week. I'd really like to gag upon looking at the frozen cat who apparently will be shaved all except for his head and tail (go figure??) I hear the smell is atrocious and I certainally don't want to touch it. However, its a required part of class so I'll have to tough it out and not let on as to what I really think of the leg muscle on the cat. All of this really makes me wonder how exactly a cat comes to be the subject of a dissection in A&P class anyhow....