Seriously? Well, it is in GQ.
You can’t have fox-hunting cats because small cats don’t hunt in packs–they’re solitary stalkers.
Also, a fox is about the same size as a big house cat. I doubt whether Kitty would be dumb enough to allow herself to be “clicker trained” into tackling one.
You can’t “sic” a house cat on a fox out in the field, because the fox is a faster runner, and is bred for distance running as well as sprinting. Reynard would be “gone away” by the time Kitty realized her quarry is there. Kitty is a slow stalker, not a chaser like a foxhound.
No, cats don’t dig like terriers, but we’re not talking about “digging” after survivors, we’re talking about sending them down into the nooks and crannies that make up “rubble”, to “explore”, to “look” via a tiny minicam. “Rubble” isn’t a solid homogeneous mass–it’s got beams and pieces of walls and floors all teetering crazily, especially before they’ve started cleaning up.
I could see cats being trained to go poke around “down there”, but I can’t see them doing it day after day, week after week. I think they get bored too easily. SAR dogs keep it up because they’re social creatures and it’s a game.
I would think that ferrets would be much more suitable to this, being eminently trainable. People used to put ferrets down ratholes in houses and barns for centuries before the pet trade got hold of them and made them trendy.