Another brilliant invention

Remember that feral cat I was feeding?  The woman who regularly feeds her asked for my help.  She wanted to trap the cat, but the cat was so wary of regular Havahart traps that the woman was trying to figure out a different kind of trap.  A trap without steel or wire mesh.  A large trap that would just look like a feeding station, except that when the cat got to the food, a trap door would close, enclosing the cat in the space.

Hmmmm.

She had given me a sketch of what she was looking for.  It looked do-able, but it also looked like a trap.  With wire mesh on the sides. It was basically a homemade Havahart.

Humpf.

I took the sketch in to the office, and asked my co-worker, who is pretty much a MacGyver,  what he thought, filling him in on the situation.  He agreed that the sides should probably be clear, so as not to look like a trap.  We discussed using a wooden frame with Plexiglass sides, but something like that would be both bulky and (relatively) expensive to build.  I thought that maybe before this woman went to the expense of having something like that built, we should find out if the cat would even walk INTO an enclosed space.  So I went to the Dollar General and picked up a gigantic, clear storage tote.  The plan was that MacGyver would cut a hole on one end of the tote, and the woman could start leaving the cat's food in the upside-down tote, so that we could see if the cat would be willing to enter it.  THEN, if the cat would go in the tote, we could discuss the logistics of building the wood-and-Plexiglass model.

Hoo boy this is getting long, ain't it?  To be continued ...