First off, I recommend buying the Tailoring books out there, it'll help a lot. Secondly, cat skins were only used for Quivers and something else on live...I'm fairly sure there's no use for them...Wolf Hides are the lowest level skin to work with. Save those pieces, as once all wolf skin armor (just regular leather armor) is trivial, you can put metal studs in leather armor to make studded leather. Then, you can use Bear skins to make Reinforced Armor, and then out metal studs. After that, there's a few different routes to go, but all involve Ointments of varying kinds. Pick up a brewing book for more info. Then around 178 or so you can make wyvernhide armor I believe. Good luck.