Creatures of the Night

Out on the porch in the 2:00 a.m. darkness I hear renck! renck! renck!, scrabble scrabble, skitter skitter skitter. A grey blur goes up the tree followed closely by an orange blur.

Red Tom, the neighbor's cat, had treed somebody in the little live oak. I figured it was Cheezburger, our resident stray, but when I went out for a closer look, I discovered Red Tom had treed himself a coon. Good Boy! An Arkansas Coon Cat!


Thanks to this particular pose, I discovered it was a boy raccoon.


He's a good-looking, healthy little fellow. I'll bet he's been into Cheezburger's cat kibbles. I wondered why there were kibbles in the water dish. Now I know.


As I snapped away with a *very* bright flash, the poor critter got more and more agitated. He kept opening his mouth to show his teeth.






By this time Red Tom had flopped on the sidewalk under the tree to watch me torment the coon with the camera. I think Tom was rather perturbed I had interrupted his fun.

The coon looked desperate to escape because this is a very small tree so going up wasn't an option and there was a crazy lady and a rather unpleasant tomcat below. I was afraid he might decide the top of my head would be a good place to escape or attack, so I backed off.

Mr. Coon finally waddled down from the tree and trotted off not a foot away from Red Tom laying there on the sidewalk. Tom didn't even bother to Ack! Ack! at him. (If you are owned by a cat you know what that sound is.) I guess they both had had all the fun they could handle.

Off he goes into the night. That fuzzy orange blob to the right is Red Tom's feetsies.


I hope Mr. Coon remembers this little episode and doesn't come back. We've got enough furry critters around here.

Ya know, there's a lot of drama around our house between midnight and dawn. Hubby misses all of it.