The Art of Apartment Cat Trapping

Winner - Life as a Vet Student
Holly Burchfield, University of Georgia

For starters, I have no will power.  I knew that Junior Surgery would be an extremely difficult class.  The surgery part would be fine -- the real challenge is coming out of it with the same number of pets you start with.  For the most part, I succeeded.  I still have one dog and one cat.  But that wasn’t without having to learn the age-old art of apartment cat trapping.

George was the last cat picked by any of the surgery groups.  He was unwanted in more ways than one.  His previous owners didn’t want him, and dumped him in the local animal shelter.  When the shelter brought their collection of cats to school for us to neuter, no surgery group claimed him.  He was last pick, like a nerdy kid in gym class.  He wasn’t exactly cute like the little orange kittens in the next cage.  He wasn’t sweet and he certainly didn’t purr.  George was older, and his coat was a dusty gray color that could be pretty if someone cared enough to brush him.  He was frightened and skittish, and more than likely feral.  He hid in the corner of his cage all week, not eating and not moving.  When the people from the shelters came back to pick up the cats after their neuters, poor George was unclaimed.  Neither shelter even remembered him.   How could they?  He was ordinary.  He had no cage card and no name.  He was unwanted.  Because of this, and my total lack of will power, I wanted him. 

I took George home the afternoon after surgery and placed him in the bathroom of my studio apartment.  My place is microscopic, and already contains two awesome pets.   My goal was to gradually socialize George so that one day he’d make someone else a nice indoor cat.  It didn’t seem like an impossible idea at the time…

Several mornings later, when I stepped out of the shower, George freaked.  He scrambled into my bathroom cabinets through a tiny hole that I had never noticed.  I opened the cabinets to pry him out, and watched his tail disappear through a second hole into the wall next to the water pipes.  George was in the wall.  I angled a flashlight back into the hole and was horrified to find that this wasn’t just a hole into my wall.  Oh no.  It was a hole into the  corridor connecting ALL 40 UNITS IN MY BUILDING.  George could go anywhere!  Oh no.  He could pop into my hoarding neighbor’s unit and disappear into her stash of cat statues, cat wind chimes, cat woodcarvings, and stuffed animals (seriously, she’s a little weird about cats… and she has a plastic lobster decoration on her front porch).   He could go into the vacant apartment on the other side of me and rampage, doing whatever the world he wanted, scratching and pooping and peeing all over the place… uh oh. 

Right away, I baited the cabinet with tuna and hoped he’d come to his senses and emerge later that evening.  My sweet boyfriend was visiting from out of town and thought it would be worthwhile to camp out on the bathroom floor that night – he is an Eagle Scout, so camping of course seemed like a good solution.  He spread out a sleeping bag on the tile and got the baited cage ready for George.  Then he passed out.  It was silent.  At 6am I heard a noise.  “Blake!”… nothing.  “BLAKE! Do you hear him?”… I realized that Blake couldn’t answer without scaring George off, so I waited a few more minutes before I went into the bathroom.  The tuna was gone and the cage was empty, and Blake had missed the whole thing.  Boys. 

I thought I could do it better.  The next night, I laid out the sleeping bag and baited the cage again.  I situated myself on the floor with the cabinet door propped open and a crinkly plastic bag just beneath the hole.  It was a perfect plan -- when George emerged, I’d hear him step on the plastic and I could quickly shut his cage door.  Easy!  An hour passed as I drifted in and out of sleep.  My legs started to go numb on the tile, and my arms followed suit.  I thought about calling it a night and coming up with a plan B tomorrow.  At that moment, I heard a crinkle… then a second crinkle.  My heart started pounding.  I don’t know why -- I wasn’t nervous, right?  This was George, and I was in my own apartment!  Come on!  But my logical mind couldn’t stop the terrifying visions of giant rats (Princess Bride ROUS style rats) creeping into my bathroom through that hole.  They would eat me!  Anything could be in there!  Anyway, my heart was pounding like crazy.  I thought, I’ll just let him walk into the cage, and as soon as he steps in there I’ll slam the door behind him!  I guess I thought that a little too loudly (can George hear my thoughts now??), or else he was particularly attuned to hearing hearts pounding out of their chests.  Before I could move my numb arms, he was gone.  DANGIT. 

It’s not that George hadn’t given me any prior warning that he was a crazy one.  In fact, as my group completed our first physical exam, he startled and leapt out of my arms onto the chain link cage door.  He scrambled to the ceiling and stayed there for thirty minutes.  We eventually had to push him down from his perch with a broom, and were thanked with a rain shower of terrified-cat urine.  It was less than fun. 

This picture was taken pre-pee-shower.

The next day I moved onto Plan C. 

I had spent the summer working at the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, and conveniently worked under a mentor who did a lot of wildlife trapping.  I called him up and asked to borrow a trap.  I thought George may have mad skills, but there’s no way he’ll get out of one of these legit traps!  These things catch wild animals!”

I baited the trap with delicious fishy food and covered it with a towel.  Couldn’t fail! 

The next morning I woke up feeling confident.  The days of having a wall cat were surely over!  George couldn’t resist the delicious food.   No way. 

But the trap was empty.  The food was gone, and the trap was EMPTY. To be honest, I gave up after that.  If my legit wild animal trap won’t catch him, nothing will. 

Another week passed.  George was still eating, and occasionally using his litter box, although not nearly often enough.  He was definitely having a party in the vacant apartment next door.  At that point, I had begun to notice the smell of feces wafting back through the hole every time I ran my bathroom fan.  Ohhhh no.  If I’m smelling this, ALL 40 APARTMENTS are probably smelling this.  Uh oh.  I needed to get George out.  I really thought he’d get tired of wall life and would come out on his own.  In fact, when I went away for one weekend, he had emerged and made a lovely nest out of my bath mat.  Of course he was back in his hole-lair by the time I came home.  

One afternoon I noticed a plumber’s van parked outside of my apartment.  I began to panic.  Not that I hadn’t been in a moderate state of panic from the start, but this was getting real.  What if some neighbor is hearing mysterious noises in their wall, and they’re coming to bust him out?!  He’ll end up back at the shelter (where they’ll notice his awesome neuter!).  I didn’t have much more time.  That afternoon I borrowed the biggest trap I could find.  The thing could barely fit into my cabinet.  I baited it with delicious food, covered the top and base with towels, and tried to make it look like a cozy little food box.  THIS HAD TO WORK, because I really had no more ideas that didn’t involve the fire department.  A few hours later I heard a metallic snap.  I ran into the bathroom, but the cage was still empty!!  Maybe the rusty old thing just came loose.  I set it one more time and crossed my fingers. 

That evening, I heard a second snap.  I peered through the crack in the bathroom door, expecting total disappointment for the umpteenth time.  But this time, this glorious time, he was there!  Sweet little George was finally out of the wall, for good!  The next morning, I brought him to his new forever-home at a friend’s house.  He lived happily ever after.  That is how I came out of Junior Surgery class with the same number of animals as when I started. 

I learned a lot from George, and I guess you could say that I am now an expert in the art of apartment cat trapping.