Instead of actually deleting a row on delete I want to update a column called "deleted" with the time that the delete happened (and maybe even set the "deleteduserid" column). Then of course, on all object->find operations I want to exclude all the deleted rows. Is this possible or am I crazy?
You'll want to use the beforeFind() model callback to filter rows where deleted=1. I would check the $queryData['conditions'], appending $queryData['conditions']['Model.deleted'] = 0 if 'Model.deleted' or 'deleted' is not set.
For more details, see http://book.cakephp.org/view/76/Callback-Methods.
you want to use this behavior http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/mariano/2007/04/16/soft-delete-behavior