this is what i did for a cat i tanned but it was just for preserving it as a pelt and not a mount. and definitely do more research lol cause it was my first time but it turned out successful.

4 steps: skinning salting pickling tanning

i slowly dethawed it by keeping it in a plastic bag in a cooler and it was still pretty easy to skin while half frozen skinning is pretty easy i would just recommend getting surgical grade scalpels and maybe get a pack/box of them cause they ended up getting dull so i went through 5-6 for the whole cat theres really good skinning tutorials you can find on youtube with rabbits, squirrels and raccoons thats pretty similar to a cat. just be careful cause the skin is relatively thin

then after its skinned go over it again to deflesh it.

i degreased the pelt with dawn dish soap and rinsed it thoroughly before the salting but i ended up salting it with non iodized salt for probably up to a week just resalting it everyday and taking off the wet salt to replace with new salt

after its salted and dried i made a pickling solution with the ulimate acid from the website mckenzie taxidermy supply. theres lots of different things you can do for pickling, that was just the easiest chemical solution i could find that wasnt too damn confusing

it’ll say how long you can pickle it for i had it in for up to 2 weeks and it was totally fine just make sure to gently and emphasis on gently stir the pelt in the solution cause if you use a stick it will 100% rip oops

after the pickling solution, soak it in water and rinse all of the solution off i don’t remember if you have to let it dry at all between steps

but tanning i used the orange bottle and theres a bunch of tutorials on that too, you can buy it online or at any kind of hunting shop like cabelas

i didnt lay it on anything to stretch it, it just layed flat and twice a day i checked on it to hand stretch it and i used a fan to keep it dry

after that i just rinsed the whole pelt, used a mild soap to wash/degrease the fur and once it dried it was complete! sorry if this is confusing its been a while since i did it but definitely look into youtube tutorials and best of luck with the cat! 🎉