Well, thank you for sharing this really interesting list of suggestions to alter our language. It's funny, but it's so sad at the same time. After all, I don't see how either of these sayings would actually hurt an animal. Most of them are pretty benign anyway, (eggs in a basket? an elephant in the room? watching like a hawk? even the dead horse is ... well, dead). The most gruesome example in my opinion is skinning the cat, but I guess it would only be relevant to those of us who actually skin cats. Raise your hand please if you're one of them... ah, ... I knew it!
So like I said, as a joke it's not too brilliant, but easy to laugh it off. However, it somehow seems to me that whoever came up with it meant it seriously. And that I think is the sad part (yeah, it makes me drop my grapes). Changing the way we express ourselves, in our language, the product of centuries of dynamic use, is not easy, especially not in such a top-down prescribed way. To succeed would require years of bother: reminding each other that what we said was wrong(!) for whatever reason. Even then, the result would be the same ridiculous sounding phoniness as "gosh darn, the freaking shoot makes my mother sad".
Thank you, though, for providing me with a topic for a short early morning rant! Now I can go out and feel like I've done something. ;-)