I have seen a number of questions on stretchers. It seems that properly putting up cats would be of great interest when one considers their value. I do not know the history of this stretcher design but I do know that one of this regions major players as a government control agent used this style.
Everyone wants to stretch / shape their predators for length. This style strecher allows you to do this and shape the hide to best conform to the anatomy of the cat. To put the hide onto the stretcher one overlaps the top ends of each side. The sides are moved outward to align and center the hide. The hide is then pinned for length. One, two and sometimes even three wedges, are driven between the two sides through the mouth opening to shape the head and neck. Finally, the lower spreader is opened to shape the body.
This is a close up showing the inserted wedges:
To remove the hide, pins are pulled, the lower speader is relaxed, wedges pulled and the sides overlapped...in this way the narrow of the neck will pass over the bulbous head form of the stretcher. One could easily add a tail board and pull the center of the hide toward the feet for greater length and even shape. Also, if one is trying to impress buyers they can do a variety of things with the front legs. I sell only to RL Cox who sells directly to end users and he likes my cats this way.
A word of caution, if you chose this type of stretcher never drive your wedges even. Rather alwys chose to leave one longer than the other such that you can grasp an end with pliers or vise grips to remove it...the skin in the neck region of a cat is thick and shrinks tight :eek:
One other little trick, if you get a bloody spot on the white belly fur, wet the fur with cool water and then pour on some 3% hydorgen peroxide (the kind you use for antiseptic). The H2O2 will lyse the red blood cells and you're white again.
I suppose that the best thing for a fellow to do would be have a good honest buyer and shape their hides to his specs. In my opinion this is the nicest way to shape a cat and surely beats wire coyote stretchers.
Hope this helps some!
