How Safe is My Cat? - Classroom Research Projects on Traps and Pet Safety

Shogun, the cat, sits on a dummy Doc200 trap box

Classes at Sawyers Bay school, Port Chalmers school and St Leonards school have been researching how pets interact with traps that have been specifically designed to catch possums, stoats and rats. The children made predictions about what their pets might do around the traps and then put out dummy traps (trap housing with un-set trap inside) in some backyards, with motion-sensitive cameras filming what their pets actually did.

The trap housing is designed so that pets can’t get into the actual trap mechanism, even if they are interested in it. The footage from this study showed that cats quite liked to use the trap boxes as perches, but couldn’t get in to the actual traps – especially with our modifications that make the traps extra pet safe. Pet safety around traps is very important and when the appropriate type of trap is used in the right way, we can catch wild predators whilst keeping our pets safe.

by Sophie Penniket