It kind of is related to this though. How can the cats care what happens to their bodies if their thoughts cease to exist after they are dead?

Conversely, someone could say the cats' thoughts and souls still live on after their body dies and so they would be upset that their bodies were cut up. I know that people used to believe that their bodies needed to be intact for them to go to heaven so they went to great lengths to make sure they weren't stolen by grave robbers when they died. Same as this current situation has with cats, there was an upswing in people killing healthy people in order to fill the schools' needs for cadavers.