Rapper Quits His Music Career To Launch A Cat Rescue

Mariel Ruvinsky • Writer and Editor

Dec 3, 2020 9:00 AM EST

Taking a break from his rap tour and looking to stay busy, Sterling Davis, better known as "TrapKing", applied for a job at the Atlanta county shelter scooping kitty litter. His interview probably went about as well as any of ours would have. "I did horrible in the interview because they had cats in the room and I was playing with all the cats, kissing all the cats," Davis told TODAY. Luckily though, despite basically not answering any of the questions he got, he managed to get the job.

"We're not seeing people like you with cats," Davis's interviewer told him. And so he started working at the shelter, helping employees there with trap-neuter-return cases, and had worked there for a few years. During that time, Davis ended up realizing something else. "At the county shelter, there were no men and no Black people that worked in the cat department," he explained to TODAY. "When I would go out and do TNR with all my friends, it would be all women — that's who trained me. I finally asked the difficult question: 'Where are all the guys and where are all the Black people?''

That's when David decided that the tour is going to have to wait, and that little kitty cats are his new priority. And today, he is running his own nonprofit cat rescue called TrapKing Humane Cat Solutions.

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via Weir Media

After working five years at the shelter and realizing that he was the only black man working there, he had made the choice to change the direction of his life and devote all of his time to helping little cats in need. His goal with doing that is: "to change stereotypes of men in cat rescue and bridge the communication gap between Black communities and predominately white animal welfare organizations." And we think that bringing in new people, of any shape or form, to help kitties in need is an absolutely wonderful thing.
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via Sterling TrapKing Davis

"I've seen rescue be something that's looked at as hard, tedious, sad," he explained. "If people can see me and I make this look like this is a rock-star type life, this is fun — you can do it." Eventually, his music career money ran out, and he sold everything he had, bought a van and continued paying for cat surgeries to support his nonprofit despite that.
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via Sterling TrapKing Davis

Next, he decorated his van with TrapKIng logos and kept doing the good work. "I started going into neighborhoods and kids would see me like the ice cream truck," he chuckled. "I would pull into apartment complexes and see young boys running up to the van trying to give me cats. 'Hey Trap, look — I got a cat. Do I get some money?'" And overtime, as he became more and more known, opportunities started coming up, money started coming in, and despite all the difficulties he had, including backlash from the black community, he got through it all and is now running his successful nonprofit.
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via Sterling TrapKing Davis

Read more about his struggles and the backlash he received in TODAY's original article. And for more happy stories of cat shelters persevering against all odds, read about this kitten nursery.
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via Sterling TrapKing Davis