We will be going out of town soon for a few days and we want to leave the cat food in the garage but if we do the raccoons will eat everything and leave the cat nothing. We have a outside cat so we can’t close the garage or it will go crazy and the raccoons come from the woods right behind our house.

We will be going out of town soon for a few days and we want to leave the cat food in the garage but if we do the raccoons will eat everything and leave the cat nothing. We have a outside cat so we can’t close the garage or it will go crazy and the raccoons come from the woods right behind our house.

My cat Spike had become uncommonly skittish when he was in his bed in the garage. He has two beds, one in the house and one in the garage. Even if I was outside with him he would nervously keep watch on his surroundings as if expecting something to jump from behind a tree and grab him. If he wanted to go into the garage from the house, he would nervously watch the garage door for any movement from the night. He even had me opening the door and looking outside to see if anything was going on.

Spike seemed to be watching for any sign of the raccoons that had camped out in our garage during the summer. When we had chased off all the raccoons except one, we breathed easier, but then Spike almost lost his leg due to a scuffle with the largest raccoon. Spike had gotten between the raccoon and some leftover food in the cat’s dish, leaving the cat with a badly mangled left rear foot.

About the same time, the neighbor’s two large dogs that were kept in a pen in their back yard began to go nuts each night about two in the morning. They would howl, bark, and lunge at the fence! You could hear the dog’s bodies hitting the chain link fence all the way too my house, two doors away! At this point we still didn’t know what was causing the commotion each night.

A few weeks went by and now Spike was spending most of his night time in the house, while the dogs continued to bark each evening after dark. Only after we spotted the coyote crossing the road to trot in our direction did we know what was causing the disturbance. That’s when we named the Coyote, Ruckus!

In the few minutes I saw him, Ruckus seemed to be as laid back as my cat Spike. As I passed him on the side of the road, his yellow eyes flashing in my headlights, he lay down and rested his head on his paws. Noticing in my rear view mirror that he hadn’t fled the scene, I put the car in reverse and backed up to where I was parallel to him. He appeared to be half tamed. After a couple minutes he must have gotten nervous, because he abruptly jumped up and ran across the field. That was the last that I have seen of Ruckus, but I hear his presence at night.

Now that I had identified the prowler as a coyote, when the dogs started barking in the wee hours of the morning, I listened closely and sure enough I heard the yipping sound of the coyote. It made me think of the old west where coyotes howled at night and cowboys sang their songs to comfort the herds of cattle they were driving to market. It doesn’t take much for me to hear the romantic side of a coyote howl! Spike didn’t see anything at all romantic about the situation. Coyotes eat cats for dinner!

Now we knew why the raccoons had left so abruptly. Coyotes are a natural predator of the raccoon. A little coyote urine splashed on a tree or even on the ground, can send even the bravest raccoon headed for the hills. Evidently my raccoons lacked the courage to defend the territory they had staked out at my garage. Spike didn’t have to share his food with the raccoons.

I once thought that coyotes could be found only in the western states, but they’re everywhere now. All across the nation as cities and populations expand, coyotes are found. I live in suburban area where there are a lot of houses, but also some open fields that are the natural habitat of the coyote.

Coyotes have a body like a dog, grey with a brownish tint to ears and legs and they will eat practically anything they happen across. They’re carnivores, eating rabbits, squirrels and raccoons as well as fish, birds, bugs and even plants. They will also eat pets, such as yellow cats who wander across a coyote in the backyard. There’s not much that they won’t eat, thus becoming a nuisance for homeowners living close to open fields and woods.

Coyotes prefer open spaces, but they have learned to live in North Alabama’s thousands of acres of wooded areas as well. A coyote’s life is not an easy one whether it lives in Alabama or Wisconsin. Yes, there are coyotes all over the place in Wisconsin and Minnesota. You’d think that they would have stayed home in Texas or Arizona, but now they can be a problem everywhere in the United States. I’m excluding Hawaii because I’m not sure they were able to swim the Pacific Ocean to get to that state. Less than half of all coyotes at birth make it to adult hood. Larger predators take their toll as well as hunters and trappers. Automobiles account for a large number of coyote deaths also.

These statistics didn’t seem to comfort my cat Spike. After a couple of weeks he began to venture outside at night and a few nights later he stayed out the entire night. He showed up the next morning hungry and tired, so I guess have seen the last of the coyote. The raccoon seems to be gone also. I’m glad to be rid of them, but a small part of me misses them; a very small part.

My cat Spike is very laid back . He’s a lover, not a fighter, so it was with surprise that one morning as I was feeding him his daily ration of cat food, I saw two scratches on his nose. He ate the food like he was famished, instead of taking a few bites then going somewhere to think the situation over. Normally he would then come back to his bowl and begin to eat again. At the time I didn’t know there were raccoons eating his food at night.

Spike sleeps in the garage. He has a cat door to the outside, so he comes and goes as he pleases. Only on the coldest winter nights does he sleep in the house, preferring the solitude of his own kingdom where there is always silence after dark. His quiet time was shattered one night a couple of hours after dinner. I heard a noise in the garage that sounded like something falling from a shelf. I opened the door to the garage and saw a large raccoon scurrying from the cat’s bowl to the opening in the pet door. He scooted through the door to the outside, then turned around and stuck his head back through the door, staring at me as if I should be sorry for interrupting his dinner.

The next day surveying the damage to my exterior door, where the raccon had scratched and torn at the pet door to get inside the garage, I did some studying about the subject of raccoon removal. I found out that they are nocturnal animals, sleeping all day and feeding and roaming at night. I also learned that there are ways to remove raccoons without shooting them. They are as follows:

Remove their food supply! This sounded like such a good idea that I tried it and it worked. I brought the cat’s dish into the house. That didn’t deter the raccoon in the least. He chewed the lids off the five gallon containers that held the cat food, scattering it all over the garage. This dampened my spirits somewhat, but I was determined to drive him from our house forever!

Play the radio loudly in the areas the raccoon has invaded! They will think someone is talking and stay away! I turned the radio in the garage to a station that played rap music all night rap station and turned up the volume. If that didn’t do the trick nothing would. It didn’t work! Somehow he climbed up a bookshelf onto the top of a refrigerator where I had stored the cat food. He pushed it off onto the floor, dry cat food bouncing on the concrete floor like raindrops on a roof.

Trap the animals. I called the city animal control people and they brought me a trap. This was a big cage that would catch the raccoon without hurting it. The theory is that the raccoons would enter the trap, stepping on the trip mechanism as they ate the bait, (cat food), thus tripping the trap door. The raccoons would be caught, the city would then remove the animal to a safe place, miles away from my house and all would be peaceful again. Wrong! The only thing I caught was my cat Spike! Twice!

I learned that those traps do work, but raccoons are very intelligent. You have to put concrete blocks or some kind of barrier around the sides of the trap so they won’t put their paws into the cage and grab the food without springing the trap. Raccoons have paws with fingers that enable them to grasp food and stuff it into their mouths.

By this time I realized I had a family of raccooons. By now I had seen five; two adults and three young ones. The young ones let me take their pictures while munching on Spike’s cat food. I reward them for allowing me a photo shoot. The older ones wait patiently outside the door until I finish shooting. They’ll finish up the food when I go back into the house. Spike the cat is sprawled in an old chair, yawning at the raccoons.

My wife thinks I’m nuts to have fallen under the spell of the adolescent raccoons. Since one of the young raccoons tries to get into the house every time the Maybe I am, but they are a lot of fun. I’ve ordered a sure-fire raccoon repellant that I know will work. It’s coyote urine. Sprinkled around the area the raccoons frequent, it will scare them away. They’re afraid of coyotes because they are one of the natural predators of raccoons. If this doesn’t work, I’ll order wolf urine.

My cat Spike is very laid back. He’s a lover, not a fighter, so it was with surprise that one morning as I was feeding him his daily ration of cat food, I saw two scratches on his nose. He ate the food like he was famished, instead of taking a few bites then going somewhere to think the situation over. Normally he would then come back to his bowl and begin to eat again. At the time I didn’t know there were raccoons eating his food at night.

Spike sleeps in the garage. He has a cat door to the outside, so he comes and goes as he pleases. Only on the coldest winter nights does he sleep in the house, preferring the solitude of his own kingdom where there is always silence after dark. His quiet time was shattered one night a couple of hours after dinner. I heard a noise in the garage that sounded like something falling from a shelf. I opened the door to the garage and saw a large raccoon scurrying from the cat’s bowl to the opening in the pet door. He scooted through the door to the outside, then turned around and stuck his head back through the door, staring at me as if I should be sorry for interrupting his dinner.

The next day surveying the damage to my exterior door, where the raccoon had scratched and torn at the pet door to get inside the garage, I did some studying about the subject of raccoon removal. I found out that they are nocturnal animals, sleeping all day and feeding and roaming at night. I also learned that there are ways to remove raccoons without shooting them. They are as follows:

Remove their food supply! This sounded like such a good idea that I tried it. I brought the cat’s dish into the house. That didn’t deter the raccoon in the least. He couldn’t see the food, so he chewed the lid off the five gallon containers that held the cat food, scattering it all over the garage. This dampened my spirits somewhat, but I was determined to drive him from our house forever!

Play the radio loudly in the areas the raccoon has invaded! They will think someone is talking and stay away! I tuned the radio in the garage to a station that played rap music all night, and then turned up the volume. I figured if that didn’t do the trick nothing would. It didn’t work! Somehow he climbed up a bookshelf onto the top of a refrigerator where I had stored the cat food. He pushed it off onto the floor, dry cat food bouncing on the concrete floor like raindrops on a roof.

Trap the animals. I called the city animal control people and they brought me a trap. This was a big cage that would catch the raccoon without hurting it. The theory is that the raccoons would enter the trap, stepping on the trip mechanism as they ate the bait, (cat food), thus tripping the trap door. The raccoons would be caught, the city would then remove the animal to a safe place, miles away from my house and all would be peaceful again. Wrong! The only thing I caught was my cat Spike! Twice!

I learned that those traps do work, but raccoons are very intelligent. You have to put concrete blocks or some kind of barrier around the sides of the trap, keeping them from sticking their paws into the cage; grabbing the food without springing the trap. Raccoons have paws with fingers that enable them to grasp food and stuff it into their mouths.

By this time I realized I had a family of raccoons. By now I had seen five; two adults and three young ones. The young ones let me take their pictures while munching on Spike’s cat food. I reward them for allowing me a photo shoot. The older ones wait patiently outside the door until I finish shooting. They’ll finish up the food when I go back into the house. Spike the cat is sprawled in an old chair, yawning at the raccoons.

Now the young ones try to get into the house every time the door is opened at night. I’ve ordered a sure-fire raccoon repellant that I know will work. It’s coyote urine. Sprinkled around the area the raccoons frequent, it will scare them away. They’re afraid of coyotes because they’re one of the natural predators of raccoons. If this doesn’t work, I’ll order wolf urine.