Home > Out of the Cage! > October 2005 > NYC Feral Cat Council: Can't Catch that Last Cat? Try the Drop Trap!

NYC Feral Cat Council

Can't Catch that Last Cat? Try the Drop Trap!

by Bryan Kortis, Executive Director, Neighborhood Cats

At a recent meeting of the NYC Feral Cat Council, Bryan staged an impressive demonstration of how to use the drop trap. Now he shares his "know-how" with Out of the Cage!

Seems like there's always one in every crowd — or colony, as the case may be. No matter how hard you try, you just can't get that last cat to go into a trap. First you tried withholding food. Then you researched the best possible bait and bought grilled chicken, mackerel, tuna, McDonald's hamburgers, roast beef, valerian root, six varieties of 9 Lives — and none of it worked.

You tried dangling a toy mouse from a string in the rear of the trap. Uh-uh. Sprinkle fresh organic catnip in the trap? Not interested. Dart gun with tranquilizer? Too dangerous, and illegal, anyway. Meanwhile, frustration turned to despair when your still footloose and fancy-free kitty showed up pregnant yet again. What's a feral cat caretaker to do?

Now, thanks to the NYC Feral Cat Initiative and the inventive mind of Laura Burns of HubCats, Inc. (Boston, MA), there's hope! The drop trap designed by Laura only requires a cat to walk under the raised enclosure, not into the narrow, confined space of a normal trap, generically termed a "box trap." For whatever blessed reason, feral cats are much less wary of walking under a drop trap than into a box trap.

The enclosure is raised up on a stick with a string attached (see photo). When your quarry goes to eat out of the big bowl of food placed in the rear, the trapper yanks the string and the netted enclosure drops down and catches the cat inside.

The trapper runs over and covers the enclosure with a large sheet to calm the cat down. Next is the tricky part — transferring the cat out of the enclosure and into a box trap. This is accomplished by lining up the rear door of the box trap with the guillotine door of the drop trap (see photo) and opening both doors.

In real life action, both traps would be covered with sheets (except for the rear and front doors of the box trap). Sometimes the cat won't run right into the box trap when the doors are opened. If that happens, pulling the sheet off the drop trap towards the doorways will expose the captured cat and usually cause her to run into the covered and darker box trap.

It sounds simple, but it does take a bit of practice to get it right, especially the transfer. The NYC Feral Cat Initiative now has several volunteer trappers knowledgeable in the use of the drop trap who can assist you and a few drop traps available for borrowing by experienced trappers (which are collapsible for easy transport). Contact the Initiative's TNR Coordinator, Valerie Sicignano, at (212) 330-0033, or submit an online "Request for Assistance" form from the NYC Feral Cat Council web site.

If you're at all handy, you can build your own drop trap. It requires only basic carpentry skills. Click here for detailed instructions on how to build and use one.

Got questions? You can contact Laura herself at HubCatsBoston@aol.com. You may also click here to check out other methods for trapping those hard-to-catch cats.

Bryan Kortis is co-founder and Executive Director of Neighborhood Cats. A graduate of Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, he has experience as both an attorney and a filmmaker. He began working with ferals when he saw firsthand that the situation for street cats in New York City was dire and a new approach like TNR was needed.

Click here to learn more about the NYC Feral Cat Council (NYCFCC), a coalition of Alliance Participating Organizations dedicated to providing responsible care for NYC's feral cats.