As if I didn't have enough to worry about ...

As if Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld weren't enough! (And the picture to the left is not Dick Cheney -- look at it carefully and you will see that it is a seemingly rabid raccoon!) The Olympian (one of our local rags) published a warning to all of us on the Olympic peninsula to be on the watch for a new breed of raccoons that chase down and kill cats! They are called (for lack of a specific species/genus/family name), urban raccoons.

The scare is real in that they have already killed ten cats (that they've counted) and it seems to be an epidemic-sort of phenomenon. Of course, they are warning us not to feed any raccoons and so my kitty bowls are all indoors today and I keep my cats indoors 100% of the time. PAWS (to which I belong) has recommended having a large dog, but with so many cats, that's not an option for me. The raccoons who live under my front porch are not fierce (not urban raccoons i don't think), but I am taking no chances. I don't even hand them a piece of dry bread when they sit on their hind legs and slap my pantlegs begging for a treat. They just scurry back under the porch when they see that I'm not going to feed them.

Of course, they still come up to my window in the front after dark and play with my kitties through the glass.

Hopefully, my colleagues in the biology department at Grays Harbor College can/will come up with a solution to this serious problem. Some of my neighbors have picked up large dogs from the animal shelter and we all (among the cat owners/lovers on my little peninsula) have pepper spray, just in case. One woman has taken to walking along the Pacific Ocean beach (walking distance from my home) with a tire iron in her hand.

This is not a Republican versus Democrat sort of situation, I don't think, but have put out my Kerry-Edwards sign in front just in case. I think they were regarded the more animal-friendly of the candidates in 2004 and I saved my signs.

The picture at the top left does indeed look a lot like Dick Cheney, I think (when Cheney snarls), but the ones under my front porch are much sweeter looking. I'll post a picture of them playing with my cats as soon as I finish my current roll of film and scan the pictures.