Love them or hate them, you have to hand it to raccoons. They’re tough, hardy, intelligent, and resourceful. If there’s food around, these little bandits will get their mitts on it. Much the same could be said of cats, for that matter. What would happen if these two species worked together?
Given that their home is near a wooded area in Illinois, Eryn and her family were accustomed to visits from raccoons. But this one was different. As far as anyone could tell, he was almost blind, at best able to see shapes and movement. The poor creature constantly bumped into things and got scared easily (wind snow, tall grass, birds). Eryn was a life-long animal lover, so she couldn’t resist giving this masked visitor something to eat. He became a regular, dropping by twice a day for the delicacies like bits of hot dog, pork, ham or on a really good day, noodles soaked in cream of chicken soup. This went on for about five years — remarkable since in the wild raccoons typically live only two or three years.
One fine day, the raccoon turned up with an entourage: two feral black kittens. It seems that the clever felines realized that a raccoon who was nearly blind had to have a source of easy food and decided to follow him. They kept coming back with their new pal, in effect having become his bodyguards!
Eventually, Eryn was able to tame the feral cats (“that was painful”) and was planning to take them to the local animal shelter. “But after putting in all of that effort, loss of flesh and blood we kept them! And they now live inside with our HUGE other cat Squirt.”
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