Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Crazy Cat Neighbor (again).

So recently, I pull into my driveway after a long day at work only to hear a voice come through the hedge:

"Hey, neighbor...can you come here and help me a minute?"

It is, of course, the female half of the Crazy Cat Couple who live next door--the reclusive schoolteachers who harbor a colony of feral cats and who are at war with much of the rest of the neighborhood over various issues.

They are nuts, plain and simple. But they are also my next door neighbors so I need to at least try to stay on decent terms with them.

I go over there and she tells me that a raccoon is on her front porch and it won't leave. Her husband is away for the week-end, no doubt doing something stupid somewhere else, and she doesn't know what to do about the raccoon because it's eating all of the food that she puts out for the cats.

Yeah--the feral cats.

I go up on her porch, and sure enough, inside one of the crates that she's set up as a little house for cats, I see this guy:
"Yep," I told her. "That's a raccoon, all right. Young one, too."
The raccoon, for his part, just stared back, showing no desire to leave. But heck, why would he want to go when he's got that nice cozy box with bedding and bowls of cat food placed just a couple of feet away a few times a day?
"So what do you want to do about him?" I ask.

"Make him leave," she says. "But don't hurt him." She just wants him gone because he's eating too much cat food and the (feral) cats are apparently going hungry.

I tell her that the raccoon is perfectly welcome at my house, but as long as she keeps putting cat food out, he's going to keep coming back.
Still, I made a bit of an effort. I gently prodded it a couple of times with a stick to see if I could get it to go, and I was sort of successful after a minute when it decided to walk away.
Of course it just walked to an adjacent cat shelter and put the "occupied" sign out again.

I told her that the only way to get it to leave was to stop putting food out here and get rid of all of these cat dens that she's created. She was, of course, totally unwilling to do either. The cats are her babies and her life when she's not teaching other people's kids in the public school system.
Obviously there wasn't much I could do here. I told her that as long as she kept this habitat on her porch, she was probably going to have other critters taking advantage of it, especially with winter coming. Then I turned to go home.
"But what should I do now?" she asked as I was leaving.

"Simple," I replied. "Either clean up this mess or just enjoy your new raccoon."
I'm thinking that the raccoon's probably there to stay, at least until stupid husband gets home and does something to it. He's been seen chasing neighbor dogs through the woods with a crossbow because they've gone after their beloved (half-starved, disease-ridden feral) cats.

And yes, the rest of their house looks like that front porch. Inside and out.

That raccoon definitely moved into the projects.

15 comments:

  1. Pruitt-Igoe, anyone?

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  2. raccoons have territories and making it leave or taking it somewhere and dumping it will only means it will return.

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  3. Good God ! You can almost smell that place through my screen. Remember to point the claymores towards the feral cats .

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  4. Coons will act like pets until it's time to breed, and then they go batsxxt crazy. If the coon stays there, it will end up biting her before spring. They carry distemper, rabies and very nasty worms that will infect you, your dog, and the neighbor's cats. Coons look much better with crosshairs on them. Get a live trap, bait it with sardines so he can smell it over his new home, and carry him far away. I am glad I live in the country, and my neighbors deal with coons the same as I do.

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  5. Incorporated or unincorporated? Zoning enforcement? Health department? Free lance arsonists?

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  6. I sure have to agree with James -- My desk now has a faint odor of ammonia after looking at those photos! So the crazy cat couple are still teaching?!?! That's all pretty scary. Aren't they potentially taking communicable cat diseases to the children? Feral and potentially rabid cats and coon??? Very creepy neighbors for you and Murph. Too bad he's recuperating or you could potentially expose him to rabies and some 'fun with kitties' next door.

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  7. You can't fix stupid...

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  8. @ Monsoon: Murphy's greatest joy is feral cat interdiction, and he's pretty good at it. He's reduced the local population a fair bit all by himself.

    @ WSF: Animal Control began to deal with them a couple of years back, counting cats and checking for vaccination records on them, but the crazy cat lady did her research and found that cats are not covered under the animal control statute like dogs are and she turned around and threatened to sue the county for the enforcement actions of the animal control officer, who wound up getting slapped down by the county commissioners for her efforts.

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  9. Yech... Of course the OTHER option is to turn Murphy loose on him... :-)

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  10. That's one happy coon. They'll not be getting rid of it anytime soon. Well..until Murphy gets a clean bill of health again, anyway. Even then, I'd put money on the 'coon tricking the cats into getting into Murphy's crosshairs before he does.

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  11. Invite Daniel Boone over. Maybe he could use a new hat. He would know what to do with the raccoon.

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  12. What did you say happened to the other half of the bag of rat-feed that Murphy ate? I think the cats might enjoy it...

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  13. Ick just ick because of Neighbors like these I paid $300 + to spay 3 more stray/ferals who showed up at my house. Stupid people.

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  14. Should be interesting when the coon decides that a few kittens look tasty.

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  15. Now that something, or someone, thinned out the coyotes that hunt the ranch across the road, the raccoons are back in the yard. I've encountered some acting weird, which might be rabies, but local ordinances forbid any action on my part, and the city/county are useless. Maybe if they tangle with somebody's kids, (not likely at night) they might get off their butts.

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