I'm gutting my cats because I am poor right now and do not want to spend money on cats since I just passed my inspection. However, I'm keeping all of the AIR stuff on so it's easy to go back.
The question is, I would imagine that I have to plug up the AIR tubes on the headers but with what, and, can I disconnect the AIR pump hoses and just let the thing blow under the hood?

 

Just take the pulley off the AIR pump and get a new length belt.

 

It won't hurt anything if you wanted to just leave it be... all your doing is putting more air into a hollow space in the exhaust... I ran my car that way for probably 2 or 3 months and I had no driving issues with it... I finally got around to removing all the smog stuff due to no testing visual or sniffer here.


IF you wanted to remove the tubing it would be easy:

You can get pipe cap ends to go on the Air tubes for both the ones coming into the bay from the Cats and for the ones off the headers... You should beable to find them at almost any hardware store.

I put them on with a big pair of channel locks.

Then you could remove the all the hoses going from the Air tubes to the diverter valve... you could remove that too since it all just unbolts and unplug the wiring connectors and zip tie them up to the intake wiring.

I really don't see any need due to you're going to have to put it back on eventually when you get new CATs.