This Topeka sixth-grader has a big idea to protect cats from cars.

Will Korus wants you to know that by the time you’re likely to have finished reading this article, more than 36 cats will have died in wholly preventable car accidents.

The sixth-grader’s two kittens, Luna and Bella, were almost two of them last fall. Will and his family were startled one day in October when they started their car and noticed the two cats bolt out from underneath the motor area, realizing they could have almost killed the kitties.

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“I wondered if there was anything online that could help with that, so I looked it up,” Will, a student at St. Matthew Catholic Elementary School. “To my surprise, I couldn’t find anything. The closest thing I could find was a mice deterrent.”

That’s when Will decided to take the matter into his own hands and create an invention that could put a dent in that statistic, won him a regional award and will put him on a national stage.

CatGuard invention uses lights, ultrasonic sound and vinegar to shoo away pets

Although he attends St. Matthew Elementary, Will travels to Shawnee Heights Elementary School each week for enrichment services with Rhonda Lefferd, a gifted facilitator at the school.

Will, along with Lefferd’s other gifted students, was tasked with coming up with an invention that could help solve a problem people face in everyday life. He immediately knew he wanted to do something to  help protect cats.

With Lefferd’s guidance, Will began testing various ideas to keep cats away from the undersides of cars. After learning to use computer modeling software and having a fellow student 3D print his design, he came up with the idea of a car attachment with multiple stages of deterrence to shoo away lingering cats.

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Will’s resulting invention, which he calls CatGuard, consists of four stages, each set off by a motion detector. The first is a set of flashing LED lights to hopefully ward off curious cats. Should that not work, a second stage begins playing an ultrasonic sound — inaudible to humans but annoying to cats.

The third stage sets off an intermittent spray of vinegar. Luna and Bella — Will’s unwitting test cats — seemed to have the most distaste with vinegar compared lime juice and apple juice, which Will had heard that cats don’t like.

“I think that was a myth,” he said with a grin.

The fourth and final stage is all three other stages put together, with the idea that cats get trained to stay far away from the undersides of cars.

“And if all of that still does not work, I have no hope for you or your cats,” he said with a laugh. “You’re out of luck.”

Will Korus will present CatGuard at national invention competition

Will and his fellow gifted students traveled with Lefferd to the Kansas City Invention Competition in mid-April, where students in grades 5 through 12 around the region competed for about $25,000 in prizes.

While the inventions themselves are no doubt important, the competition puts just as much emphasis on the soft and interpersonal skills students might learn from developing and promoting an invention, such as logging your work and communicating ideas.

After all, most elementary schools don’t offer “Inventing” classes, and Lefferd said all her students got something out of both the process and the competition.

“This is something they might not get a lot out of in other classes, so Will was able to go through that invention process, seeing the process of trial and error and learning perseverance,” Lefferd said. “He also learned how to communicate. A lot of these kids have never given a pitch or speech before, let alone having one memorized. For them to do that as fifth-graders, this is huge.”

At the competition, Will ended up taking first place in the fifth- and sixth-grade category, which qualified him for the national level of the competition, as well as the Early Inventor’s Award. The awards each came with cash prizes and a travel stipend to the nationals this June in Michigan.

Lefferd and Will said the CatGuard resonated with judges and other kid inventors.

“I think there are a lot of people who relate to this, and think they need something like this,” Will said. “A lot of people have cats.”

CatGuard may be Will’s first invention, but it certainly won’t be his last. Will, a member of a family full of inventors, hopes to turn inventing into a career, especially after he uses some prize money to buy his own 3D printer, but he also dreams of becoming an engineer at NASA.

The biggest lesson he learned from CatGuard, though?

“This might sound corny, but when you try your best at something, you can get things done,” he said. “Like with making and memorizing a pitch, I thought there would be no way in a million years I could do it.

“But hey, I did it in a month.”

Rafael Garcia is an education reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached at rgarcia@cjonline.com or by phone at ‪785-289-5325. Follow him on Twitter at @byRafaelGarcia.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Topekan Will Korus' CatGuard invention will compete at nationals