Man vs. Raccoon, Part II

We continue the saga of the Raccoon that is slipping through our cat door into the garage, eating all the cats' food with nary a protest from our cats - Fraidy and Idgie - and apparently with their passive cooperation. You'll recall that - in honor of his resourcefulness - we named him Rocky.

Last week, in "Man vs. Raccoon", I told of borrowing Sandy's animal trap, baiting it with cat food and placing it outside the cat door, in hopes of trapping the pesky critter. For three straight days, no luck. Last night, I baited the trap again. Idgie scurried outside when the garage door started closing, but Fraidy remained in her bed. We went to bed shortly thereafter.

We got up this morning, and Sharon came in from the garage, excited, and reported that we had trapped an animal. The gleam in her eye suggested that it was perhaps less than we could have hoped, but ironical and funny all the same. I headed outside, and sure enough, we had indeed trapped an animal:


Idgie was none too pleased, as you can see from this picture, and embarrassed to boot; no mean feat for a cat that has no shame. This unsettling turn of events actually took him off his appetite, as there is clearly still food in the cage. I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that this happened around 11:05 p.m. last night.

I put the trap out at 11:00 p.m.

I must admit that I relished this moment just a bit, not only because I predicted it would happen, but because he had it coming. Before and since we adopted him, Idgie has poached Fraidy's food daily, usually before eating his own; he eats at several neighbors' houses; he constantly squawks for more and fresher food whenever we venture into the garage; he lives only for food. In other words, Idgie is an incurable food scrounge.

I'm taking bets as to whether he will get trapped in the cage again tonight. Even money says I'm posting another picture of him in the cage, this time tomorrow.

And tempting as it is to draw parallels between the Pavlovian compulsions of a useless house cat's food obsession and Barack Obama's reliance on non sequitors during news conferences, I shall desist.