Raccoons and cats: always an interesting mix. This interloping procyonid first makes a stew of the cats’ food and water, and then, when cornered, grabs a double handful of noms, forcing it into bipedality as it makes its exit.
There is no limit to the cleverness of the Procyon lotor.
I watched a raccoon steal my food… and did nothing!
The way the raccoon picked up food and ran bipedal at 1:10!
Truly, they will inherit the earth after man …
(cats and dogs have no chance)
Tricksey theif!
They growl too. My dad, old man that he is, poked one with a stick to persuade it to stop pooing on his garage roof. It growled but finally left.
You got to admire their intelligence, dexterity and toughness. Also the cute masks are handy; you can’t identify them when they steal!
Her posture reminds me of an Australian marsupial.
Ever the fastidious eater, even with cat food, the raccoon still washes it before eating it. 🙂
Do any other mammals do this, or is it unique behaviour?
I looked it up in good old WIKI & the behaviour is called dousing. The same source says the binomial Procyon lotor is neo-Latin for “before-dog washer” & makes the claim that dousing may be an instinct from when this creature fished the sea shore [to get salt off?]. There doesn’t seem to be agreement about why they douse & also it seems the idea that they don’t have saliva glands isn’t true.
It doesn’t seem like sensible behaviour ~ costly, but who am I to say?
Or maybe to get sand off? Save wear on the ‘ol teeth?
Some monkeys do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-euMlL9O1Kc
It makes sense to me anyway that a raccoon might rinse his kibble. Lately, I’ve been finding many ants in the bowls of kibble I leave out for the stray cats!
The older monkeys didn’t adopt the habit. The fogey monkeys are thinking, “Oh luxury! In my day we had to go up hill both ways to get a non salty sweet potato!”
Extra protein surely?
My friend’s cat does it. Unfortunately he got shy when I pulled out my camera and started eating normally before I could get a video. Fortunately, a search of “Cat dipping food in water” on YouTube turned up a few examples of other cats doing the same if you were interested in taking a peek.
What throws me is how many different methods they’re using to get the food into and out of the water. For some reason I was kind of expecting them all to do it the same way.
This was written by a coworker yesterday on a company mailing list about this very topic:
“Growing up, we spent some time trying to keep raccoons out of our garbage cans: Put garbage in can, wake up to find garbage spread across the driveway. Put heavy rocks on the can, wake up to find rocks on the ground and garbage spread across the driveway. Buy a raccoon-proof can, wake up to find garbage spread across the driveway and rude graffiti written on the can. Buy a steel can with a padlock, wake up to find the lock picked and garbage spread across the driveway. Hire private security, wake up to find them unconscious on the ground and garbage spread across the driveway.
Eventually, we gave in to the inevitable and starting throwing anything edible on the ground in the back yard. The raccoons never touched the cans again.”
My parents did the same. Gave up on putting chicken scraps and bones in the trash altogether, and started putting them on a plate on our back porch, with the porch light on, and having me sit and watch the raccoons eat. Its one of my earliest memories, probably from when I was 2-3.
Judging from her teats I wonder if she has kits to feed nearby & is thus more bold & brazen than usual? Or perhaps that’s how they roll in Florida 🙂 [“orange blossom” image on the Nissan’s tag]
While visiting in Virginia, I was sitting in the dark enjoying the cool breeze after feeding the cats. I started hearing loud crunching and thought, Wow! That’s a hungry cat. As I opened the door I saw it was a raccoon among the cats! Ran it off but was awakened during the night to cats trying to run it off the porch. It was very aggressive.
Opossums crunch even more loudly. My cats have a six foot ladder to an open window (covered against bright sun and UV rays), and once they learned to climb in and out that way, the opossums followed and then the raccoons. They try to sneak in while I’m asleep. Sometimes, one or more of my cats will draw the line, hiss and swipe, and wake me in the process. Usually, though, either their crunching wakes me or I wake normally and find a completely empty dish. Cats never seem to eat the final few morsels, and they somehow spread a few around the area outside the plate, but raccoons and opossums clean all that up. If the water bowl looks okay, I know only opossums came in. If it’s had kitty kibbles washed in it, raccoons were there. Oh, and if I wake to find a raccoon trying to come in, stopped by a cat, I calm the cat, take over, and am subjected to that raccoon’s cutest efforts to convince me to just hand him the entire food dish! Seriously, they can “cute” like nobody’s business! Gets to me everytime.
That run/scamper was the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long while
That run/scamper was the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long while!
The nonchalant actions of the cats was fascinating (except for that one little hiss). Imagine if it were a dog that size, or even another cat! Makes you think that maybe this racoon was a regular visitor and they’d gotten used to it.
I’d already seen the ending of this, as one of those gifs you see everywhere. I still laughed my head off.
Pet food must seem like manna to wild animals. We used to keep dog food in a big garbage can on the front porch. After noticing that we needed to keep refilling it sooner than usual, one night my mom heard a noise and went out there and it turned out the can was being visited regularly by (at this point) the world’s most obese possum. I think it was living in there every night, lolling in dog food.
We got a new, secure can, and the poor thing had to learn to find its own food again. I’m sure its copious fat stores got it through the lean period, though.
My cat (who, sadly, passed away a couple of years ago) would never have put up with raccoons coming that close, let alone taking his food!
OT but of possible interest to Jerry and various posters; at 10pm on the Science channel tonight, Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole is tackling the question of whether we have free will or not.
I’m in the Eastern time zone; your time may vary.
A charming burglar.
I loved how the racoon watched the human while stealing a couple handfuls!
It’s almost as if she knows the food isn’t hers to eat. 🙂
There’s a stray calico cat living on my back porch right now. Up until last night, the raccoons haven’t been around. This morning though, there was quite a mess out there. The bowl of kibble was mere crumbs with a dusting of hand-like muddy prints. The water dish was full of kibble sludge and mud. The cat was nowhere to be seen till later. Guess the food will have to be brought in at dusk. I wouldn’t mind feeding the critters but their table manners need improving.
Raccoons were there first.
I can see the cats going:
“Look out, it’s a ‘coon, man!”
“Oh yeah, I wanna study his technique.
Raccoons are indeed very clever! When I was camping in the Colorado mountains, I thought I was clever by putting the leftover baked beans from supper into a zipper bag and putting it in the cooler that had a metal latch. Woke up the next morning to a plastic bag ripped open and the remnants of the beans all over the camp. The raccoon did have the courtesy to close the cooler lid after grabbing the beans however!
My mother in law was feeding a stray cat on the back porch until she realized she was actually feeding a possum. She quit putting out food.
There is a raccoon documentary on Netflix right now if anyone is interested. I believe it is called Raccoon Nation but I could be wrong.