Cat Trapping

We used to do a lot of cat trapping and removal jobs. We used to bring them to the shelter that issued the cat trapping permit and turn them in, but ever since Covid that stopped. The shelters just stopped taking cats for whatever reason. We don’t know why. Maybe we’ll start trapping them again or talk to the Department of Fish and Wildlife because it’s just not working. The biggest cat job I ever had I ended up handing off to Bob.

All the guys got a piece of it because we were setting about 10 traps at a time, maybe more and removing 10 cats to the shelter in one trip. It was at a warehouse downtown Los Angeles, and we had 10 traps set and by the next day we had 10 cats ready to go. We just kept doing this and ended up removing close to 100 cats. It was a high number. It was a big moneymaking job. We’ve always loved cat jobs, but I’ve also done a few as a young trapper. When I worked for Steve, I remember going to a house where there was a mother with kittens in the backyard and under the house. I crawled underneath the crawlspace, got them out from underneath the house and I had them cornered in this big backyard that had fencing, so they couldn’t escape.

They had nowhere to go. I remember that mother cat was meaner than an ex-girlfriend and I just went to just grab it by hand. If you’re ever messing with a cat and trying to perform animal removal by hand, it’s not recommended. It is a terrible idea. I had gloves on, but I still tried to grab these cats by hand, and I’d think “don’t let go of that cat, that’s money!” because every time we removed one there was a charge. So, I removed a family of seven or eight by the time the job was done.

I was covered in blood and cat bites. It was a pretty gnarly job in Bel Air. It was one of my memories of being a Trapper and going after cats. It’s always good to remove any animal if you can on the spot versus setting a trap and waiting a week for it to get caught. Whether it’s their house or outside, but it doesn’t always work out like that.