Ok, so, true story – I had gotten the weasels to bed and was writing a bunch of excruciatingly sad and gothily introspective stuff right here where this paragraph is now, when I heard our tom cat, “Tom,” amble into the kitchen to eat. He’s getting on in years, and, because he lives in two houses (long story,) he eats A LOT. The boy has heft. So when he waddled in and made the floor creak, it didn’t surprise me. And when he made a lot noise eating, it didn’t surprise me. He’s a boy cat – they aren’t always known for their subtlety.
But when he growled, low and mean, it surprised me.
I jumped up and rushed over to discover what was probably the second-largest raccoon I’ve ever seen eating the cat food. Apparently I was *not* the second-largest human it had ever seen, or even close, because it turned slowly and stared at me, and then ambled into the back of the house. I quickly followed, closing the weasels’ doors, and then panicked when I realized it had gone into my bedroom, where the new cat was.
Cats and raccoons are not generally warm, fuzzy friends who share tea and cookies.
On came the shoes, out came the broom, and I rescued one cat from the bedroom (she was extremely indignant that the big, ugly cat had gotten all her food wet) and pulled the other in from the outside. It took a bit of patience, but the raccoon finally ambled out and I locked the cat door, cleaned up the mess, and reassured everyone in the house.
The upshot of all of this was a big adrenaline rush and a reminder from the Universe to stop taking myself so seriously. Yes, life is kind of hard lately, but geez, Roxy, get a grip. There are much worse things in the world.
Like, for example, raccoon pee in the garage. Maybe I looked bigger than I thought?
