choppin' pipes

Last night my bike was involved in an accident without me on it. A guy on an sv650 made a right turn at a light, grabbed too much gas, lowsided, and sent his bike spinning into mine which was parked by the sidewalk as i was doing a little side-of-the-road ironhead sportster repair work. (a word of caution: it would be wise to not lay under a motorcycle on the side of the road on a main street in daytona beach during biketoberfest) Lately i've been running a custom straight pipe under-the-tail exhaust, but in the recent events it has been bent and smashed rendering it temporarily, if not permanently, useless. So i'm forced to put my stock low mount cans back on. Luckily, I had them stratified a while back so i dont have to go back to full-quiet. Ok, now time for the question... I was looking at the pipe and noticed some honeycomb stuff on the inlet side, I'm assuming that's some sort of catalytic converter....? Ive read a lot about people coring their cans but i havent seen anything about the honeycomb stuff. Has anyone removed this? I'll ask the ducati instructor at school tomorrow if i remember, i just wanted to first find out if anyone has had first-hand experience with it. You guys are usually a bit more open-minded about chopping stuff up than a lot of the people i talk to at school. I haven't run into too many people who share my rat rod enthusiasm towards "fine italian machinery"