I have had great success baiting a trap with sardines. I tried some leftover fish/crab meat and that was also very successful. The stinkier the better I think. I have heard from a trapper that a blinking red light (from radio shack for about $3 will help, but I tried that with no success. Hopefully your county still has an open intake shelter and you can bring your trapped cat there. They use your tax money and you should be able to use their services. Sometimes it helps to cover the top and sides of the trap, but again, most of my success has been with standard cage traps baited with sardines. PLEASE do not trap and relocate. It is irresponsible and puts the burden of removal on others. There is absolutely nothing wrong with trap and euthanize. It is more humane than allowing the cat to be killed by coyotes, cars, disease or parasites. Once you start trapping keep at it until no cats are caught for a week. You may have to start again if another cat shows up (or is re-abandoned by a so-called do-gooder), but eventually all the chipmunks, birds, and lizards will thank you (in their own way). Good luck

I once read on an British website to sprinkle mothballs outside around the house and garden that this will keep the cats away. I think that using mothballs and pepper spray will insure them to stay away without fatally harming cats.

I think you are the troll here Sadman, oops, Woodsman. As your comments are routinely removed from other boards and your recommendations are not only morally repugnant but often illegal, I would have thought that the moderators would be more interested in hearing that you are notorious across the web for threatening and outraging decent people who have a balanced outlook on this topic. Is anyone really interested in your tips? Doesn’t look like it. Again, I repeat my advice to those who come here for help: take the sensible and compassionate route- neutering works.

To the moderators: It’s time to ban Illogic & Compassionless from this forum. It does nothing to answer the question. It’s just an off-topic troll desperately looking for attention.

p.s. Fix your “Newer Tips/Previous Tips” links, they no longer work. And there’s no option for “View All” anymore. The Illogic & Compassionless Troll is just scrolling the valuable information off of this page with its useless rhetoric. (I tried to provide this info through your “contact us” link, but that’s not working either. I’ve used 3 different browsers to test all of this.)

Woodsman, ever heard of projection? The belief that something has been done a certain way for an amount of time clearly does not justify or make it right, just as slavery was practised for years but recognised to be immoral. Ever heard of progress? Humanity? Adopting newer technologies if they reduce suffering? Not to mention the fact that you relentlessly contradict yourself. If your friends who have cats drown cats, are they not classified as “useless piece of s%*t”(your words) irresponsible cat owners who, if they are choosing to keep cats as pets have neglected their responsibility to have their pet neutered? I suspect these friends are imaginary; not only would you need to be a huge hypocrite to remain friends with people who propogate the very issue you appear to find the most pressing concern in the modern world (over population of felines), but I strongly suspect from your manner that any decent human being would be alarmed, creeped out and revolted by your views! At least now we know where you live, in your mommy’s basement in a wood whilst mommy allows her pampered cats to roam above- it’s the only logical conclusion and explains your hatred. To all normal people reading my post, cats are sentient animals attempting as we do to survive, show them compassion and neuter pets to avoid the problem.

Illogic & Compassionless, you really should get out of your mommy’s basement more often. Putting a litter of kittens into a burlap-bag and drowning them is as old as the hills on how to control cat populations in rural areas all over the world. Ask ANY farmer or rancher on how they deal with this problem. My friends with cats do this as well, as do their friends, and their friends, and so on. They KNOW about the balance of nature and how to protect it from a destructive overpopulation of invasive-predators — unlike you. You’ve isolated and insulated yourself from reality and the real world for so long in your mommy’s basement that you’ve made yourself verifiability psychotic. It’s blatantly clear in every last one of your posts. Get help.

Drowning kittens? You really are a piece of s@*t Woodsman. Normal people reject your delusional, cruel views. What about your boasts on other sites that you ‘loved dearly’ your childhood cats and are happy to have friends’ cats sit on your lap? Are these the same friends that you ’surreptitiously’ spy on to find out which brand/s of cat food they may feed stray cats? Hmm, suspect your ‘friends’ are friends of yours purely because they don’t know your hidden venom and spite.

Some help for those of you who cannot use more effective and swift means due to local laws passed by spineless and astoundingly ignorant lawmakers. Then you need to practice the “TDSS Cat Management Program” in your area. Trap, Drown, Shovel, & Shut-up. (A modification of the SSS Cat Management Program — Shoot, Shovel & Shut-up.)

1. If there are any feral or stray cat-feeders in your area, surreptitiously try to find out the EXACT brand and flavor of foods that they are feeding these cats that you need to trap and destroy. Feral (and wild) animals will only trust proven foods. There’s a HUGE difference on if a predator will eat live and moving known-foods or just any dead unknown-foods they find laying around. Cat-food with “Real Tuna Flavor!” on one brand’s label will NOT smell nor taste the same to these cats as with “Real Tuna Flavor!” from another brand. Use what these criminally-irresponsible cat-feeders have been doing to your advantage. They have already trained these cats to completely trust the foods they are explicitly using, and will be highly wary of any others. The cats would rather wait for a food that they know they can trust rather than risk eating an untested food. Use these cat-feeders’ foods to bait your traps. Later, you can thank the cat-feeders for spending so much time, effort, and money training those cats to enter your traps for you. Or you can let them enjoy their mindless bliss of ignorance and be happy that their cats must have “died of loving attrition” just like they had planned for. What you are doing also falls under the definition of “attrition”. Just don’t tell the cat-lovers that, they get upset whenever having to face reality.

2. You might have to bait your trap with an effective “cat call”. Contrary to popular first-misconceptions, “Here kitty kitty” will not work on feral cats. They evade human sounds. I had to use an MP3-player “cat-call” to get the remaining few on my land that would never come close enough for a humane kill with a gun. Get an MP3-player and compact and inexpensive (~$3-5) battery-powered MP3-player speakers that you can get on ebay. Download sound-files of cats in heat, mewing kittens, and others. Cat-lovers are more than happy to share the sounds of theirs and others cats all over the internet. Now you can put those sound-files to a worthwhile purpose. Cats will check out these sounds for several reasons: territorial behavior, mating, or to destroy any kittens that are not theirs. (That old phrase is actually true! Curiosity DOES kill the cat. I now suspect it was seriously helpful wisdom handed down from ages past.)

3. Some people reported that putting a stuffed animal in the trap with some catnip-extract is also effective to increase chances of a cat entering the trap.

Humanely Euthanizing a Trapped Cat

1. Put trap + cat in any water deep enough to drown them **(see note). This is often used in rural areas for excess kittens as well as excess adults. If you have nosy neighbors that will raise a stink, then do it in your bathtub or anywhere away from their eyes. If you can’t get water deep enough at home, then tell your neighbors you’re dropping them off at the shelter as you drive to the secluded shore of a lake or canal. (BTW: Don’t trust your shelter to destroy them. In one horror story I read online, a person spent several $thousand in repairs and renting traps, only to find out their shelter turned them over to TNR fools because the shelter didn’t want to be bothered with the expense and hassle. These TNR criminals then returned them to the person’s business that the cats were previously destroying. Now under the watchful eye of animal-control that nothing can happen to those cats because they now belong to the very people who were trying to get rid of them. Out of $thousands in damages and expense and time and even worse off than before by taking them to an animal shelter because now they have no way at all of getting rid of them. This is just how much that cat-advocates can destroy your life and livelihood.)

**(note) Drowning is not considered humane by the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association), but ask any person who has survived drowning and they will tell you that once they got past the holding of the breath part, it was an amazingly wonderful experience. This is due to dying from hypoxia – loss of oxygen. Recent studies have shown that dying of hypoxia to be the utmost humane method of all deaths. (By using combinations of various gasses at atmospheric pressure or high-altitude low-pressure situations. CO2 paintball cartridges fitted with a valve can also be used. A 16-gram paintball cartridge produces almost exactly 400 cubic-inches of CO2 at 100% concentration at atmospheric-pressure. A 30-50% concentration is used for humane euthanasia, respiratory arrest in under 1 minute, death in under 5, as reported by AVMA’s own findings, published in their own reports of “humane euthanasia”. Adjust # of CO2 cartridges required according to the cubic-inch confinement space of the cat. One 16-gram CO2 cartridge can fill an 800-1200 cubic-inch space with 50% to 30% concentration. An enclosure of 8″-12″ X 10″ x 10″) Hypoxia allows for a human or animal dying in a complete state of euphoria, not even aware that they are facing death. The source of the phrase “Rapture of the Deep”. I suspect the AVMA discourages drowning because they don’t want everyone to have a simple and FREE method, instead bringing money into their own pockets to use a less humane method of death by lethal injection. Which is no guarantee that the animal isn’t suffering to death while fully aware but paralyzed in torment with drugs, experiencing all the pain of a full-blown heart-attack. This has been reported by humans facing death by lethal injection but survived to talk about it.

2. Take trap + cat to any location where a gunshot cannot be heard (or would be of no concern) by others. A rural area or in your basement. There are also very quiet types of .22’s being sold today (called “quiet” or “subsonic”) that are no louder than a CO2 air-rifle. Low-power, but powerful enough to humanely kill a cat. In most rural areas nobody even thinks twice if they hear a gunshot going off in the distance — it’s a normal day, any time of year, day or night. (This popular method of taking the cat + trap to a safe location to shoot them was shared with me from people in CATifornia that use this method all over the state due to their extremist laws passed by cat-advocates.)

In all cases, be sure to bury or incinerate the carcasses so all the myriad diseases that cats carry won’t go on to infect more wildlife nor humans.

Returning these highly-destructive invasive-species back to the land (other than buried deeply) is not an option. They must be destroyed.

More Help for the Urbanly-Disabled

We all know, it’s been proved 100% in every location, that trapping has failed and failed disastrously. Trap & sterilize does not work. Trap and kill does not work. The common denominator — slow, inefficient, easily outfoxed traps.

People living in urban areas are locked behind laws passed by incredibly ignorant and stupid lawmakers as well as wanting to ensure the safety of their neighbors in finding the swiftest methods to remove all cats from their neighborhoods.

The other day (while posting something) another novel solution came to mind for the trapped and handcuffed urbanite.

Use Tazer/Stun-Guns. Police have no problems using them on humans knowing they are potentially deadly even on humans. Employ them to take out your excess cats. Granted, you won’t have the range afforded by a decent .22 or even a good air-rifle. And you might have to still resort to quick-confinement and drowning or a quick injection after they are immobilized. But you’ll be able to get more cats as well as those that have already learned to evade all trapping methods. (A common problem reported online by people who are advised to use traps. They just give up and buy a .22 or air-rifle instead.)

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taser “There are a number of cartridges designated by range, with the maximum at 35 feet (10.6 m). Cartridges available to non-law enforcement consumers are limited to 15 feet (4.5 m).”

Either of those ranges could be considered within distance of many bird-feeders.

I bet that exceptions will be made for “civilians” on the type of cartridge that can be purchased, once “Feral-Cat Eradication Patrols” are coordinated in every neighborhood, town, and city — as they’ll eventually be forced to do. What with people like “Illogic & Compassionless” in the world who are only ensuring the exponential increase of feral-cat populations everywhere. They’ll have no choice in the matter then.

Do note: Sterilizing will NEVER EVER EVER be considered a viable option on any cat that’s allowed to roam free. This does NOTHING to prevent an invasive-species from spreading diseases and destroying native wildlife. THE VERY REASONS THEY SHOULDN’T EVEN BE THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. If you’re going to do the job, then do it right. Solve ALL the problems your cats cause in the world — or get the hell out of the way for those that can, will, and DO.

Whatever. Your comments under both pseudonyms were still removed and the majority of respondents disagree with your extreme views. Cats deserve a bit of respect simply because they are sentient animals. Yes, they’re carnivores, as are many species, but to vilify an entire species is wrong and cruel (think fox hunting and the lies spread about the ‘cunning’ fox-why not the ‘intelligent’ fox…because it suits people to vilify so that they can be cruel with a clear(er) conscience. To scoff at preferring a humane solution to a problem is a sad reflection of today’s world in which cruelty towards the weaker is acceptable. Feral cat problems are man made and there are better solutions, albeit more lengthy, than to kill or maim. Starting with educating owners