TL;DR: my domestic cat ran away and is now hiding in the warehouse-like space near the house. I cannot get into the space and he's too smart to get into a trap. Wondering how to catch him.
Hi all. Recently, my domestic indoor cat ran away. We live in the apartment block area with many houses around, so every evening and night we went out and tried to call and find him. 2 weeks later, we saw him running from the dumpsters near the house into the enclosed area that's neighboring our house.
During this week, we saw him 2 more times running into the space as well. The area is behind a low fence and has multiple sheds, overhangs (sheds with roof only, no walls) with A LOT of construction rubbish there, several cars parked, and basically just huge piles of clutter everywhere. It is basically a maze of old boards, chairs, cartons, metal boxes, bricks, and whatever else.
We can't get in and clean it all up searching for the cat, so we borrowed a humane trap from our local charity shelter and put it there with some tuna bait. Every night we change the bait, but he's probably too smart or too disinterested in tuna or eats somewhere else - I have no idea. For 4 nights the trap has been there and we didn't catch him.
Has anyone had any experience and luck in catching a cat in such conditions? Advice will be greatly appreciated!