Raccoon-Proofing the Cat Feeding Platform

Ever since Tux had been captured in the humane cat trap, he is no longer visiting the feeding station.  I let the trap be open again.  If he gets hungry enough, he will show up, eventually.  I am hoping that if Chai is hanging out with Tux wherever he stays during the daylight hours, she may one day follow him to the feeding platform.  I wish I could see her again, even for a second, even for a second on my video surveillance, so I know she is alive and safe.  That would keep my hopes alive and energize me in my search.

But to safe-guard the cat food from the raccoons, I have decided to build walls around the shelf so that the walls would deter the raccoons from setting their paws onto the shelf.  I bought two 0.25"x2'x4' boards to place as side walls and one 0.25"x3'x4' as the backdrop to make the back wall go up higher than the fence.  I even bought a buck saw to carve out a 2"x4" slot so that the side boards can slide over the 2"x4" holding the fence on the top side of the fence.  I bought several brackets and screws to hold these boards in place.  It took me a couple of hours to assemble them and put them into place to create walls around the feeding platform shelf

Feeding Platform with Walls

However, the raccoons have discovered that they can still climb down over the back wall!

Raccoons Climbing Down over the Back Wall

Ugh.  So now I bought another 0.25"x3'x4' plywood board to use as the roof over the top, having it longer than the depth of the shelf so that they can't try to climb down onto the platform from the rooftop.  With no one to help me put the roof over the feeding platform, it took me 45 minutes to do this by myself, and it was placed askew, but still OK for a makeshift feeding platform that I want to be raccoon-proof.

First night nothing came by to eat, which made me worry that maybe I made the platform not only raccoon-proof, but also cat-proof.  But then, during the next day, the pregnant/lactating motley female cat came to chow down.  I think she jumped up to the platform, like I was hoping all cats would.  Her initial pose looked liked she had just jumped up and tripped the motion sensor on the camera for it to start recording:

After she was done eating, the cat jumped down from the platform:

Female Cat about to Jump Down

 The roof is not visible on the video or the photo, but it's there and so far so good:  no raccoons.