Help trapping a cat please!

[Moochie]

There's a cat that not only bugs my birds but pees and poops on my mom's garden, on the tomatoes and stuff. I set the trap up yesterday with the bait and in the morning the food was gone but no cat. Today I set up the trap with bait again, but this time I spread it around, and I went outside because I heard something and the cat ran away. I look at the trap and all the food was gone again. How is the cat not stepping on that metal part that triggers the end to close?
This is frustrating me and my mom. We caught a previous cat last week easy on the first try. But is this one too smart for us? What can we do?

The cats actually belong to a neighbor, my mom has given them warnings about their cats and dogs, and animal control has given us the OK to trap the cats on our property.
Their dogs also poop next to our mailbox and bark at my mom. I was outside before and two dogs came onto our driveway and was barking at me so I grabbed a stick in self-defense and I was yelling at them to go away. It's really scary, I wish some people would just take better care of their animals.

 

[Moochie]

Also the trap looks like this
I put the food past the trigger usually in a small bowl, but for this smart cat I spread it around. Yet she won't step on the trigger. Help?

 

[Mattemma]

Try adding some catnip. If trapping is not working try to befriend it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I built this open box to put over the trap so the only way an animal can get to the bait is to go in through the door. You can't see it here, but I also wired the trap onto a small sheet of plywood on the bottom to help stabilize the trap so it cannot turn it over.

I don't know what you are using for bait, but you might try hanging it from the top over the trigger. It sounds like you have a trap-smart cat, but maybe you can distract it by hanging the bait so it forgets about the trigger.

 

[War Chicken]

It could be that the trap is too small and the door isn't latching properly or it's too flimsy and the cat just rams its way to freedom. Or it's reaching over the tray and getting the food, perhaps assisted by first batting it closer to the entrance from the outside.

 

[Moochie]

Thanks guys but I got it today. I just put the can in there too.. I don't have cat food so I've been using canned dog food for bait, which backfired, the cat threw up in my mom's car. This isn't the cat that's spraying my mom's tomato plants so we're gonna try to get that one too. My mom loves her garden and she's always ranting about the black cat that pees on her tomatoes, and one of the plants is dying, so hopefully this will make my mom feel better.
What can we use to get cat barf and cat barf smell out of my mom's car? The barf itself is like stuck to the trap, weird hair and barf mixture, but there's a stain and it does smell... That smell you find when you're house shopping and you find that one house whose previous owners had cats that weren't litter trained.