Skinning Day #2

Focus question: Was it easy to remove the skin from muscle?

Location

Making an incision which crosses the first incision going from one hind limb to the other in the stomach region. Make another incision across the forelimbs. Make incision around all four paws to take skin off of limbs.

Procedure

1. Put our masks, gloves and aprons on
2. Take cat out of back room
3. Take cat out of bag and place on bin cover
4. Take out the scalpels and check to make sure the blade on securely
5. Start the incision on the left side of the hind legs and work way across stomach region
6. Start to remove skin from muscle
7. After incisions have been made, clean scalpel off and place back in the kit
8. Place cat back in bag after removing stray hairs which have come off due to the incision
9. Clean off cover of the bin in the sink
10. Place cat bag in bin and and put bin in the back room
11. Wash hands

Materials

1. apron
2. masks
3. gloves
4. cat bin
5. kit
6. scalpels

Data collected
The cut in the abdominal region was much easier. The skin was not nearly as tough as it was around the neck. As we started to move aside the skin from the actual muscle, the differences of the two colors could be found, as the skin was noticeably more white while the muscle was more pink. The thing connecting the muscle to the skin is a white web-like structure which can be sliced through easily.

Conclusion
Today, I was taken aback by how easily the skin moved aside from the muscle. I think I did the cuts on the cat well since I didn't cut into the muscle very much. However, I did end up going over the cut a few times on the abdominal region since it did not slice immediately. Today's incision was much easier to do as we did not need to hold our cat's arm back in order to effectively reach the abdominal area.The cat is still soaked which I personally find disgusting but I'm learning to move past it more and more each day. However, when we flipped the cat over to do some of the skinning on the back, some of the liquid almost leaked on to me. Today, my allergies were making the dissection more difficult than usual. On the bright side, the skin is almost off on our cat!