Would like to try a cage trappers but enjoy tinkering and not spending a ton. Coons and marten would soon destroy t but I think a cat would be fine. Cheap commercial traps seem awfully low height-wise. A few cage trappers I talked to put their entire traps in garbage bags so I can’t think solid would be a problem . I’d likely weld up a guillotine door. Any thoughts or examples?

Why don’t you just go out and buy a quality cat cage trap so you can see what quality is.

I suspect, more than anything, a caught ‘cat will leave a lot of fear pheromones that would be soaked into the wood. You may catch one but subsequent visitors won’t go in. The value of a mesh surface is that metal doesn’t absorb odors. If it gets stinky, power washing should remove it.

I made one and still have it in my trap junkyard. It is 1 foot wide at the door and 18 inches tall and 36 inches long. It’s made with three-quarter inch plywood. It’s a power door trap. It just weighs too much because of the weight is not practical to use except for like armadillo around your house as mentioned before the stink is a problem. Doesn’t seem to matter as long as it’s something like an armadillo or something like I wanna call a few animals with it, but it held up real well. The only real problem is just the weight. It never malfunctioned or had a problem in that way. It was just heavy.

I came asking questions, so I’m not going to argue but I have heard that cages often catch much better on the second cat. Also remakes and catch circles seem attractive, not a negative, so I actually thought retention of smell in the plywood was a positive. Maybe both are true in different circumstances

so true. The problem is getting rid of the smell that you may get in there that you don’t want. You can’t simply wash it out.

We had two guys here that built the frames out of 2by2 would covered with old rabbit cage wire. The doors they made out of plywood and the door frames they built with the 2by2 wood. They ran on the family plan and caught 30 to forty cats a year. At the end of season they pulled the doors off and threw them under the trap. The one guy has been dead for eight years but you still find the traps around most in useable shape.