The Saga of Walmart Cat, continued

Remember the feral cat I was feeding while its primary caregiver was out of town?  The one we built the trap for?

Yeah, that cat.

Time for an update!

As I mentioned, the woman had used our trap to capture other community cats, and it worked brilliantly.  Last week, it was time to try it on the wily Walmart cat.

First, the woman set the trap up with the door disengaged.  She set food in the front of the trap and waited and watched to see if the cat would at least enter the trap.

It worked!  The cat set its front feet in the trap to access the food.

The next day, she set the food back a little further into the trap and waited. This time the cat had its whole body in the trap to reach the food.

It was time to act.

The woman set the food alllll the way in the back of the trap, engaged the trigger mechanism, and waited.  And waited.  The cat didn't come around.  So the woman left for an hour, came back, and ...

The trap had failed.

The cat (or, well *a* cat) had entered, and the door had started to come down, but because it had been out in the weather for several days, the plywood door had warped juuuuuust enough so that it only came halfway down before getting hung up.

The cat had escaped.

*sigh*

Needless to say, we were all disappointed.  The woman was devastated, convinced that the cat would never, ever go anywhere near the trap again.  I told her to keep trying, that she didn't even know for sure that it was "her" cat who had entered the trap, to set the trap up again but disengage the door until we could fix it, and back off, and see if the cat would go back in it.  What did she have to lose?

Sure enough, yesterday she saw the cat enter the trap.  Again.

We're back in business.

Now I've just gotta figure out how to fixed that warped door.  I swung by this morning and picked it up, but unfortunately, MacGyver is out sick today, so I'm on my own.  I need either figure out a way to shave the front of the door down, or figure out a way to cut the bin-hole it drops through a little bit bigger.  Time to go hit the internet ...

I'll keep you posted.