Raccoon robbery?

[Tigger]

We have an outdoor cat (well, she adopted us, anyway), whom we feed on the front porch. She's had a few run-ins with other critters going after her food, but usually just steps away when it's a raccoon. Smart cat, I guess.

We've spotted the (a) raccoon eating from the dish, and usually pushing it around some in the process. We can tell a 'coon has been there, because the bowl is licked CLEAN. And there's usually some mulch fragments in the water dish. Such tidy varmints.

The odd thing is, some animal has made off with both of the white dishes we had been using for the cat food. Dishes of some sentimental value, even. And we cannot find them anywhere near the porch, nor anywhere in the woods nearby.

I suppose a raccoon could drag an empty white dish around if it wanted to. But why?

Tigger

[nanny_56]

Some of them seem to like carry off items that strile their fancy for some unknown reason. We have been adopted too. I use a heavy plastic dog dish. Easier for his big head too! I also have gotten him to come during daylight hours to eat. He gets feed at 8am. I leave the bowl out and refill it in the afternoon. He shows up for dinner between 4 and 6pm. The bowl comes in at dark to avoid having the raccoons coming up on the front porch...for the most part. I had to quite leaving water out too because they would play in it and every morning I had a muddy water dish to clean!

We had a female and her kitten Annie too earlier this year. We were able to take them out to a farm. This our precious Meese!

Meese

DSCF5215 (Small).jpg (35.73 KiB) Viewed 1688 times

[JaneG]

Could be the raccoons. I have found our bowl off the porch out in the lawn. We try to discourage them by giving our cat only as much food as he will eat at one sitting, but you know how finicky cats are, some days he eats it all, other days he doesn't. So the coons are occasionally successful and continue visiting our porch.

We have a motion-activated camera out there and were startled to find that throughout the course of late evening, overnight, and early morning, we are visited regularly by several neighborhood cats out on the prowl. They walk right up the sidewalk and directly to the cat food bowl. Of course we also see the raccoons. Last week a momma brought 3 young ones with her, they roamed around the porch a while and then ambled off.

I hope you find your bowls. Perhaps they will show up in the shrubbery when you are cleaning up at the end of the season or in the spring.

[Kas]

We had a big metal pot we used for the dog's food get stolen as well as a big white pyrex casserole dish we used after the pot went! We later (like two years!) found them in the woods behind our house. But only after the developer started clearing to build. Just be glad that is all that has happened. A big raccoon will kill a cat.

Kas

[govgirl75]

A neighbor had pet dishes taken as well as margarita glasses taken off the deck, presumably by the raccoons. One of the glasses was found by the fence but none of the other stuff was found in the yard but they did not look in the woods. The folks who lived there earlier used to feed the raccoons Oreos each night and developed quite a following. When the neighbors went on vacation and no Oreos were forthcoming, the raccoons decided a little B&E was in order and literally ripped the wood board and batten siding off the back of the house. They must have been pretty mad because there was siding on the deck, in the pool, and all over the yard. They gave up after ripping through the insulation. Needless to say, the neighbors did not think the raccoons were so cute after that and stopped feeding them.
Glo

[Tigger]

Great stories. I think we're going to allow the cat to eat her evening meal in the kitchen, then put her out (without food) for the night. Easier to train a cat than a raccoon.

Hopefully the dishes will turn up. They were from the dinnerware at my college at Rice University, the only souvenirs I kept.

[Gardentoad]

I would not encourage racoons to come up on my porch. They carry a roundworm that can be serious and transferred to humans (especially children) and some other animals. I knew a bird owner that brought eggs in on their shoes and infected a pet bird that walked on the floor.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dpd/parasites ... scaris.htm

Also as posted they can kill a cat or a small/ medium sized dog. They can carry canine distemper.

[Kas]

Just an update. Last night I saw a video clip on Win Blog of a raccoon stealing a thin rug through a cat door! Unbelievable!

Kas

[Gardentoad]

I don't know for sure what animal did it, but something has made off with all 4 of my suet cake holders.
My 3 seed bird feeders are all still there so whatever it is, it just wanted the suet.