42 Boardwalk Cats Trapped in 9 Months
Since Cats of the Boardwalk started trapping at the Myrtle Beach Boardwalk back in October 2025, Laurie and Ron Peterson have lured 42 cats into cages and swiftly whisked them away to Fix A Friend Spay Neuter Clinic in Winnabow, N.C. — a milestone nine months in the making, one cat, one trap, one very early morning at a time. When they started, it was just the two of them, a handful of traps, and a boardwalk full of cats who had never known anything but life on their own. Nine months later, that number — 42 — represents 42 fewer litters, 42 healthier cats, and the Boardwalk colonies just a little more stable.
What that number doesn’t show is everything that goes into it. Some nights it’s a trap check well after the boardwalk has gone quiet, flashlight in hand, making sure no cat is left waiting longer than it has to. Other mornings it’s Laurie and Ron out before sunrise, coffee in hand, checking the same spot they checked twelve hours earlier, sometimes for the third or fourth day in a row before a particularly cautious cat finally takes the bait. Rain has a way of showing up at exactly the wrong moment, too, turning a routine check into a soggy, patience-testing one, traps left waiting for a break in the weather. Through all of it, Ron has become something of a trap engineer in his own right, tinkering and rebuilding at home to improve on the designs they started with — small fixes, sturdier latches, better covers — that add up to a lot fewer empty traps and a lot more successful mornings.
Not every setback has been weather-related, either. One trap mysteriously vanished from its spot on the boardwalk entirely — only to turn up a few days later down on the beach, moved there by persons unknown, for reasons Laurie and Ron still can’t quite explain. Thankfully it was recovered in one piece, none the worse for its unplanned relocation, and the story has become one of Laurie and Ron’s favorites to tell whenever someone asks what a night of trapping is really like.
None of this would be possible without Fix A Friend Spay Neuter Clinic. It’s a bit of a drive from Myrtle Beach, but they’ve been an incredible partner to this program from the very beginning, and we can’t recommend them enough for anyone doing TNR work in the region.
For daily updates, check out our Facebook page, Cats of the Boardwalk Myrtle Beach, where Laurie and Ron chronicle their trapping expeditions — the wins, the near-misses, and everything in between.
