Today, my younger cat Ruby tested her hypothesis for the first time, and jumped up to hang on the louvered blinds with all four paws so she could look outside. Totally effed up my blinds, but she did prove it could be done.
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I have at least two that live under my house. They make funny chittering noises and scratch at the bottom of our tub “talking” to our indoor cats… Maybe taunting is a better word.
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Not at all sure whether valid metric, and not that many data points anyway - but I’ve seen far more cats that ended up as roadkill than dogs.
Off the top of my head, maybe a 7:1 ratio.
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What follows is totally unsolicited cat advice. Feel free to ignore it.
Is she fixed? Because that sounds an awful lot like a female cat in perma-heat. That is where the cat repeatedly ends up in heat b/c of lack of virile male partners to get her pregnant. Makes them yowl, get extra clingy and/or aggressive.
If she isn’t fixed, then call your vet and have it done. It could dampen a lot of those behaviors. Not remove them entirety, especially if she has been doing them for a while. But really take it down several notches.
If she is already fixed…you still might want to discuss the behavior with your vet. If you generally type at a desk, try getting her something/somewhere to lay that is within easy reach of you. A cat bed on the desk, a cat bed on a tall table next to to the desk, a cat tree next to the desk. Whatever works. Keep putting her in it, feed her treats in it, pet her while she is in it, cover it in catnip. Hopefully, she starts hanging out there instead of on you.
If you really need to work or concentrate, spend 10 minutes with her doing an intense play session, then give her food, and a place to lay near or on you. She will probably fall asleep.
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Hurray for the scientific method
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Ahhhh…oh, boy…Raccoons rape cats. Brutally. Those thugs are trying to scratch through the tub and grab some, uh… ‘kitty’. If the raccoons get ahold of your cats, the whole neighborhood is going to hear it, and kitty is going to sustain damage.
Now, skunks and cats, on the other hand, get along really, really, well. So well, there would be ‘skunkittens’ if it weren’t for a chromosome mismatch.
From link below: “So the direct answer to the question “Do raccoons have opposable thumbs?” is no, raccoons do not have opposable thumbs.” (Which Wikipedia confirms.) I too thought they had opposable thumbs, but I guess technically they aren’t truly the same anatomically as primate thumbs.
http://getraccoonsout.com/do-raccoons-have-opposable-thumbs/
However, it’s moot, since they seem to be able to do a lot of the same things you can with opposable thumbs.
Well, we’re debating some nebulous idea called “asshole factor”, so it’s largely a matter of opinion on what is bigger asshole behavior. I’ve never been attacked by a cat except in the few times I touched some sensitive area while petting it (I’ve seen this on dogs too, some don’t like you touching their nose), whereas I’ve been nipped and chased and straight-out attacked by vicious dogs (including at least one that had to be put down after multiple complaints from different neighbors.)
It also depends on the animal. Humans can be assholes, humans can also be nice, depends on the human and how much alcohol they’ve drunk that day.
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Thanks for the advice! She is fixed, a senior (will be 20 this Fall), and very clingy. I’ve been told she was left alone a lot by her previous owner. I’ve had her for nearly 8 years, and since I work from home she gets lots of attention. Still, if she’s awake and I leave a room for more than 10 minutes, she comes looking for me. When I go out, she yowls when I return (the amount of yowling depends on how long I’ve been away). I purposely feed her a favorite snack before leaving the house, because that usually leads to a nap.
She’ll be happy somewhere near me, until it seems I’m paying more attention to a device - so my e-reader and laptop are her main targets. Also, in the past year, she started trying to sleep on my foot. I suspect that’s so she’ll know if I’m trying to escape. 
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Do you want to listen to so-called ‘experts’ and scientists, or do you want to listen to a redneck who keeps a stick on the front porch just for chasing raccoons? I got the stick from a dumpster, so I guess I’m just completing the loop.
Some of the things I’ve seen raccoons do, that probably meant something once, evolution-wise, but are just anthropomorphically silly now:
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Give a pet raccoon a sugar cube & a bowl of water. They put the sugar cube in the bowl, it dissolves, and they frantically search for it everywhere. Give them another sugar cube…
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They like to get up on their hind legs to scare you off. They do the Thug Walk toward you, and you’re supposed to run. You’re not supposed to start laughing, then hiss through your teeth and chase them with a stick.
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The antibiotic-resistant disease that will kill us all won’t come from an ICU, it will come from a pet owner whose Fur Baby gets bitten by a raccoon, and is pumped full of broad-spectrum drugs to cure it. Trash Pandas* are quite literally potty mouths.
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Yeah, out of all the Happy Mutants, I’m the one most likely to wind up with a yard raccoon that answers to a name & eats out of my hand. (sigh) Just because I know I have the crazy gene, doesn’t mean I can fight it forever.
*‘Trash Pandas’ I don’t know where that name started, but I’d never heard it until this thread. I can’t wait to tell my mailman, who live-trapped a whole family in his chimney, gave all the babies a bath, and filmed the reunion with mommy.
Update: I ran outside to plant some Raspberrius Purloinedum, and I told my mailman about the ‘Trash Pandas’ nickname. He chuckled evilly like Guillermo from Jimmy Kimmel
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My cat loooves my attention as well, will follow me around but thankfully if i tell him no when annoying me he’ll settle down. I did set his cat bed at the foot of my desk and when he naps i put my foot inside and that typically keeps him happy for a while. If i’m really concentrating on a game he will leave me alone but the second he sees i’m free he likes to get up on my lap for naps and cuddles.
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Sounds like Lucy was fearless. What do humans do to deserve dogs?
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I couldn’t find a clip online, but Dave Chappelle has a whole comedy riff about roadkill. He claims squirrels get run over because they have a crisis of confidence: “I can’t do this… " BLAM! - halfway across the street. But he claims that raccoons get run over because they’re over-confident.”…walking around in a fur coat, driving gloves, and sunglasses. They stroll slowly into traffic because they want to look cool."
Good samaritan: “Hey! Look out for that car!”
[The raccoon turns to confront the good samaritan]: “What you say? Motherf - BLAM!”
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Wow, that sounds so much better. The cats I had as kittens didn’t have these issues. This is my second senior cat adoption, and probably my last. It would be nice to return to Europe as a traveling cat-sitter, freeing up other people to escape the furry clutches of their felines for a while.
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I’ll bet you’re fun at parties.
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He is a very good boy, i very much enjoy his company even when he drives me a little bit batty. I hope to be able to get another cat to keep him company some day, i think he’d appreciate having a buddy.
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The buddy idea crossed my mind, too. I’ve known two indoor cats who had regular visitors from outside - through the window. The first was my grandmother’s, who used to sit at the front window of the house for hours, nose-to-nose with a neighborhood cat sitting on the porch. Now, my brother’s indoor cat is visited daily by a neighbor’s cat who comes around and sits on the window sill every morning.
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Would you consider Tijuana for a month-or-two-long stretch someday in the future?
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Claro que si!
Yeah, i’m not too fond of raccoons that don’t back down when you yell at them. I had to push a chair at one to get it out of my house once after it it come through the cat door looking for cat food (or maybe cat).
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In fairness to Council, they’re the second most valuable voting block in the city, right after people who want a Scarborough subway. And making the raccoons happy is a lot cheaper.
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