It would appear that Oliver, the stray cat we "adopted" a couple of weeks ago, has moved on to find greener pastures. I haven't seen hide nor hair of him in 3 days. I'd been leaving dry cat food in a bowl for him, and it kept coming up empty, so I thought he was at least swinging by to get a bite or two. But now I know better...

I opened the front door last night to see if he might be outside on the porch. I didn't see him immediately so I looked down at where his food bowl was. I saw a tail pointing away from it and thought he had finally come "home". I started to open the door just a little bit. It took me a couple of seconds, when the animal turned around, to realize that it was not "our" cat after all, but a rather large raccoon. It was feasting on the food I'd left for Oliver. It didn't seem to spooked at first, and we had a bit of a staring contest for at least a moment. I was fascinated, because I'd never seen a raccoon so close up except maybe at the zoo. I wanted to take a picture, but the batteries in our camera are dead so I was out of luck. Don't know why I opened the door a little more...raccoons are rabid, after all...but I did and that finally put the fear of God in him. He shuffled off into the night.

He came back not too long after that. I'm sure there was food he knew he'd left behind. It didn't take much to scare him away this time, as the novelty of his appearance had by now given way to a cautious reluctance to keep him from making these visits a regular habit. Taking on a wild kitty kat is one thing...I don't need or want a raccoon. It's bad enough that they get into my trash cans and scatter garbage all over my back lawn as often as they do.

Now that I think of it, leaving a bowl of cat food on the front porch is a REALLY dumb idea. Last night it was a raccoon up by my front door. Tonight it could be a skunk.

[Update 2:53 PM: Coaxed Oliver back to the house a couple of hours ago, having spotted him in the lot behind the back yard. Gave him a can of WET cat food...went ahead and fed him the whole can, since I don't know if he'll be back again and I don't want to be stuck with an extra can of "Special Kitty" (even if it DOES smell just like Spam and might actually be tasty).]

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