My personal thoughts are that cats that may have off-colored bellies and/or be smaller in size (assuming I keep them) sometimes benefit from having the feet left on the pelts. A cat with feet on will have more interest to the wall-hanger market and usually allow buyers to get a few dollars more for them, while not removing any usefulness if they find their way into the garment pile. It only takes me an extra 5-10 minutes to skin out the feet and pin them out, so I figure it's worth it if only to keep options open. Big beautiful cats with nice bellies I don't bother with the feet, as I just figure a cat likely to bring $500+ in the garment market will never find it's way to being a wallhanger anywhere. I sell a fair number of these B belly cats to the taxidermy trade as well, so keeping the feet on while skinning, keeps that option open for me as well. Hope that helps.

Good idea with the feet.

TRAPPERKRIS asked me to post this pic for him. Hope it works!

RF, if you've got cats like that with white down the hind legs, pull them hind legs together so you can't see the seam between them. It makes the belly look longer. When I split the legs on cats like that I follow the color line when splitting so all the white is on the inside of the legs and all the brown on the outside. If you have cats like a fair number of our timber cats that have brown legs without much white it probably doesn't matter if you pin them together or not, but it isn't going to hurt you any.

If you look at the two cats on the left you can see how you have a small strip of brown on the inside of the legs, before you get to the white. That is very common if you split straight down the back of the leg, which is exactly how I skinned most of my life, but the last couple years I have been splitting down that color seam between the white and brown, then when you pin those legs together it is solid white all down the middle.

I personally have never had an issue with how I handle my cats for my personal markets. Even though I'm in the golden region of top quality cats, I never put all my eggs in one basket, and sell my cats through different markets. Following the color line is sound advice for the fur trade, and equally important, at least for me, is pinning them out nice on a skirting board. Alternative markets will sometimes benefit from different initial cutting techniques IMO

^^^^^^^^ This.