[winchester6788]

If you can position the camera so that only the "counter" is visible from it, a much easier option is to use the pre-trained yolov4.

https://gist.github.com/YashasSamaga/e2b19a6807a13046e399f4b... (download links for yolov4.weights is at https://github.com/AlexeyAB/darknet)

Using this, you will be able to detect if a cat is present in your image.