Stock cats are not the cats your father had! Modern cats are not very restrictive at all. CFM numbers on your stock cats are not that much off the numbers of the high priced "hi-flo" cats.
I have a CAI & Long Tube Headers and still have my factory cats.

and YES, removing your catalytic converter WILL generate a CEL...

 

Just curious, what was the poi8nt of removing them off the camaro? Same prinicple likely applied to the truck. As Hammer said, removing them will generate CELs but thats also why we use non-foulers to trick the O2s so no CELs will come on

 

Removing cats does not aid in massive HP gains. It's more trouble than it's worth for most guys with anunual inspections. If you search all over the web, you may be able to find some before/after dyno runs with/without cats and most guys that are stock gain a measley 2-3rwhp by removing them. The higher HP guys gain a we bit more, but I have never seen anyone gain 10rwhp or more just by removing the cats.
Guy that dynoed my mustang told me that he dynoed a few cars before/after cat removal and not one resulted in anything over 8rwhp and he does some sick *** cars.

For what it's worth, I's rather have cats just for the smell and eye burning sensation that comes from not having them. My mustang was always parked in the garage and I couldn't let it idle for even 2 minutes in there without my eyeballs burning and throat beginning to get scratchy. Maybe I'm just a wuss, but my wuss eyeballs know what they didn't see...lol

 

Im sure most people want to remove them for noise purpose, at least they do around here, There are many ways to remove them and get away with it, non foulers work great so does shutting them off via custom tuning, its all who you know and who will let you get away with what. I have no cats and still pass my emmissions testing and visual inspection

I took my stock cats to the scrap yard and made 35 a piece and these were 20 a piece