yeah its prolly bad.
You cant just chop it off without having 1 issue. The rear o2 will now read wrong and cause some fueling issues.
You could buy a new cat or an aftermarket cat and weld it up and then that would fix the problem.
OR remove the cat, weld in a pipe and get the code tuned out by someone with a tuner and be off scott free, but you wont pass emissions if you do that if your state has them.