It's the real thing! About 2 AM the other night my wife and I awoke to the sound of loud crunching in the adjacent kitchen. Now we do have two cats and they often snack at night but this sounded more like a hyena was at work. I decided to investigate, arming myself with my wife's purse, a deadly weapon if you know what it's loaded with, and stepped into the kitchen turning on the light. Sure enough, staring up at me was a half-grown raccoon with both front paws still grabbing up kabibbles. His mother was right behind him and made a dash for the cat door but her off-spring was in no hurry to leave. He didn't snarl but he kept busy stuffing his face. However, I was much bigger than him and by this time my wife had appeared armed with another deadly weapon, a wristrest for a keyboard. The raccoon decided to exercise discretion and follow his mother out the cat door.

Well, we made sure that our black cat was still shut in the bedroom and determined that the calico one was sleeping in the office loft. So much for their maintaining the security of our house. Of course, we were just as happy that they hadn't gotten involved. Raccoons are the equivalent of a small tank compared with our two sophisticated felines. This may not have been the raccoons' first home invasion. We had noted that our "cats" were cleaning out their food dishes on a more regular basis and that their water dishes were muddier than usual.

What to do? Well, there really wasn't much we could do because we were to be off to a music festival in Canada in the morning. So we briefed our catsitter that she might encounter some uninvited guests in the evening. She agreed to lock the cat door in the early evening if both cats were inside. So off we went.

When we returned we found out there had been a 2nd visit. Our catsitter had been distracted by a TV movie and didn't get down to our apartment before 10 pm, and then discovered it was fully occupied by 3 raccoons, apparently an additional young one. They were having a ball resorting our CD's in the office. Fortunately both computers were off or they might have logged in to Mudcat and posted their own amusing story. Two of the racoons exited quite fast but the 3rd one decided to hide in the corner where all the wires are patched into the surge protector. Our catsitter's husband had been by this time recruited as back-up. I might mention that he'd just got back from his 2nd tour as a communications consultant in Iraq. However, his wife explained that he was quite gentle in his confrontation with the remianing raccoon, only using a water pistol rather than his usual defensive arsenal. Eventually he was able to persuade the little bandito to leave.

We're still not sure what to do. We're leaving again in a few days for a two week tour of the Pacific Northwest and our cats hate to be cooped up. I do have a large Have-a-Heart trap that I could load with grapes, a favorite food of raccoons which cats are not interested in. But that would only catch one of them at best. We'd hate to break up the family. The others would probably get spooked. We're not interested in harming the bandito family, which rules our quite a range of alternatives. We'll probably let our catsitter deal with it as best she can, shutting more doors to protect the office and the bedroom.

Any other great suggestions?

We used to have a young raccoon as a pet on the farm I grew up on so I'm very familiar with how smart the little bastards are. These do not seem rabid but that's also a concern and they could certainly injure our cats if they felt cornered.

Charley Noble