HuntinFool,
If you don't want to catch cats, all of the above advice is good.
The white marshmellow or egg is the visual attractant, and the vanilla, anise oil, ect is for the nose.
Other sweet baits include peanut butter (by itself or mixed with honey), maple syrup (also good mixed with PB), jelly (especially grape), green grapes, cantelope, and ripe apples.
If you don't care about catching a few cats in the process, and the sweet baits aren't working (like they sometimes don't), you have a few more options.
Tuna (in oil), cheap stinky canned cat food, fried chicken scraps, Berkley Power Bait crawdads, and McDonald's cheeseburgers (with the bag and wrappers) can all be very good.
Use of a trailing scent can help, pulling them off a known travel route into your set.
If you are using sweet baits, take some jelly and mix it with (warm) water, about half and half... (or maple syrup) thinned down, to a thin syrup.
I use an old dish soap bottle, and fill it with this mixture, and after the trap is set I'll sprinkle (not squirt) my way, from the back of the cage, around and down the trail a ways (about 12-18" wide).
Don't put too much down, or too wide a path, it can cause digging, just enough to keep their nose busy.
Pure anise oil, just a drop of it, increases the pulling power.
Likewise that's what makes tuna (or sardines) a great bait, going the opposite direction, I'll trail the oil off the can until I reach the set location.
With tuna, and any other smelly non-visual keyed bait, I like to cubby the bait under the cage. This causes an animal to linger longer, and shuffle around trying to pull up bait, making it more likely to step on the treadle and fire the trap.
I have some pieces of plywood with a hole (slightly larger than the tuna can) cut in them, and a cage trap wired onto it.
I'll cut out a clump of sod, or dig a small hole, and set a can in it, then I place the cage down over the can so the hole in the plywood (which is just past the trigger pan) is over the bait.
Then I use a stake on each side, angled in, to pin the board down.
Raccoons are smart, and will roll cages over, or dig in from the sides, or tip a cage until the bait (like marshmellows) can be reached through the wire.
They will also tear at anything and everything they can reach from inside the trap, including the ground, that's the biggest reason for the plywood (cages that go on the roof, have no hole in the plywood, a 'coon in a cage will destroy the roofing around it).
If you don't place the cage on a board, use stakes through the cage wire itself, to pin it down, and prevent rollovers.
I haven't found the need for covering traps, especially for urbanized raccoons, I find the damage they do to the cover, and the mess it can leave behind isn't worth it.
But I do like to make the outside of the cage less accessible, and make the entrance the least path of resistance.
Sometimes a funnel of fencing, plywood, or whatever obstacles are handy (garbage cans, flower pots, brush, etc), to guide them the way you want, is needed.
And for some, a defensive tact is warranted.
Small sharpened sticks (or bamboo skewers (99cents a 100)) can be stuck in the ground (some sticking out about 6", with others about 1" tall in between) like mini tank-traps, and will keep them from going where you don't want them.
If there's anything else just ask.
Good luck.
Krusty
