by Jack
Last night around 11 pm I heard a cat yell, it wasn’t very distinguishable as anything in particular, just one short, loud, Meroow and then silence. It had to be Lucky, he sleeps near the front porch until I bring him in at night. So, I ran downstairs and opened the front door. To my surprise there was small cat sized raccoon pressed against the door and my cat, Lucky, was poised a few feet away in full attack-cat mode. I looked down at the raccoon and he looked up at me. For a split second we shared a mutual “what the bleep”?
Of course I quickly closed the door before the animal could run inside. Now that would have been a good story…anyway, I watched through the leaded glass in the door and noticed that a larger Raccoon, at least 25 pounds, had positioned herself about 8 feet away from Lucky and was moving closer. So, as soon as the smaller raccoon fought his way off the door step, I opened the door again and grabbed Lucky’s steel water bowl and tossed at the advancing raccoon, but she wasn’t in the mood to move much, it just bounced to the side of her and she kept her focus.
She hissed at me, and then crept closer toward the fight. Her maternal instincts pushing her to attack Lucky who again had her baby engaged next to the garage door. This is less than 10 feet from the front door of my house and here I am in shorts and barefeet. The two combatants threw a volley of swipes at each other, it was a real fur ball, but fairly harmless. The mother raccoon made a run towards the fight and I had to act fast to disengage these two before Mama jumped Lucky. The only thing available was… one more cat bowl? Oh great, some weapon and I’m running out bowls! I made a quick for Lucky’s food dish just as Mama raccoon made her attack, I flipped it as fast as I could at her and fortunately the flying bowl interrupted the advance. It hit just hard enough to distract her at the last possible second before she pounced on Lucky. At that moment Lucky noticed the second raccoon and in this was enough of a distraction for the little raccoon to run to Mama and away from us. Both raccoons had enough and all they wanted to do is get out of there. I moved foward to grab Lucky. But, he started to follow the pair! Oh no… I yelled at him and he apparently heard me and stopped just long enough that I could grab him. We made a bee-line back inside the house. Miraculously, Lucky had no bites or injuries at all and it’s unlikley the raccoon had any either.
Lucky is 16, he only has four teeth and his hearing is almost gone, but that didn’t seem to slow him down when it came to defending his turf, as has been his typical MO with cat intruders.
Looking back, I bet the raccoon was after Lucky’s cat food on the porch. Lucky was probably still sleeping on the sidewalk as the raccoon pranced right right by him and started munching on his food. But, when Lucky finally noticed, that placed the Raccoon between my front door and Lucky and the raccoon had nowhere to run. Mama was likely following a discreet distance behind and so the 3-way cat and mouse, er, cat and raccoon game began.
We live across from Bidwell Park so wild animals in the front yard are not unusual. We’ve had deer eating my grass, possums looking for bugs, turkeys, squirrels, an occasional skunk and of course the raccoons, always looking for a free meal late at night. I’ve noticed skunks walk past Lucky, but for some reason he’s never given them a second look, maybe he thinks they are related? Both are black and white.
Get Lucky a cat size .45 so he can Stand his Ground. lol
Good one Toby! Come to think of it, Lucky was just doing his neighborhood watch when this young raccoon he had never seen before came along acting suspicious and wearing a black mask… oh geez, lol
We adopted a kitty who showed up in our back yard lost and hungry about two years back. We had the vet check her out. Female (obvious) fixed (thank heavens!) about three years old, and calico (redhead of the cat world). So, we adopted a teenage, female, redhead, feline. If she likes you, she really, really likes you. If not, she is a fur-covered skill saw. Fortunately, she likes us.
We live in the country and have adopted six and a half such cats. Some were dumped (age 3-4) and some born in a barn; some fixed and some not…we fixed the nots. We lost four of them to predator animals in the area all within a few weeks. So when the last one showed up my husband decided we would keep the back door shut but unlatched so she could push it to run inside if threatened. This is at night when we’re home. She brings in an occasional “meal” but she’s a smart cat so we taught her to take the critters to the bathtub where my husband can rescue them if they are still alive or she can (yuck) have her meal if they are tot. She always leaves a token stomach for us. (double yuck) One night we had dozed in front of the TV and my husband awoke to find a baby raccoon feeding at the cat’s dish in the kitchen. It was quite a fete getting that little guy to leave but eventually he went back out. Since then the neighbors adopted a stray but they are gone a lot so their cat started finding his way into our house. He looks enough like our cat that we didn’t notice him at first…then he got a bit aggressive about being in so we decided we’d set a bowl out for him…I just know we are feeding the raccoons too and who knows what else. Whenever you live in a rural area…or across from a park…you can count on wonderful encounters with the animal world. I also had a bull in my backyard one day…rancher lost some fencing I guess.
Nice story Tina, thanks for sharing.
Lucky lived up to his name because in a battle between a cat and an adult raccoon, the raccoon is the winner . . . . .