Oh NO! Raccoon in Baby's cat house

"MaryL" wrote in message
...


"dgk" wrote in message ...

I built a very nice styrofoam home for outside cats, currently
occupied by a small girl cat named Baby. The house is wedged into an
area between a fence and the steps up to my house, so it's quite
stable.

This morning, while leaving for work, I saw a raccoon going into
Baby's house! I did not build this for raccoons. There isn't really
anywhere for a raccoon to hide in the front side of the houses, so I
just left it and headed off to work. But this evening I'm going to
make sure that the raccoon does not get the idea of living there
permanently.

What can I use to discourage the raccoon from staying there?


The only thing I can think of would be to make the opening too small for a
raccoon to enter. As you know, cats do not need much of an opening to
enter and exit. However, the additional problem is that raccoons are
*very strong* and could tear off an ordinary panel if it wanted to use
your new home.

And they have hands.
Glad we do not have them here. My Michigan friend says they can operate
locks to get in to his poultry.

On Thursday, March 22, 2012 6:03:30 PM UTC-6, Christina Websell wrote:
"William Hamblen" [email protected] wrote in message

Raccoons are large animals well equipped with teeth and claws. One way to
deal with a nuisance raccoon is to have an animal trapper capture it and
take it far, far away.

Bud


I do not agree with this approach, as you merely transfer the problem to
someone else.
When I was having a huge (daytime) fox problem and was trapping some years
ago, my foxman said to me after a while "what we are getting now are not
*your* foxes." I asked him what he meant. He said "your foxes have always
been dark coloured, small, slim, country foxes. What we are getting now are
large, butterball fat ones, fresh from city living and someone is releasing
them near here" I believe him as it is easily done on a quiet back road
across a few fields from the bottom of my garden.

Most reputable trappers will relocate an animal to a wilderness setting, not another neighbourhood. At least here they will. We have tons of habitat for the little beasts, ever the foxes have their "place", over in a cornfield about a half mile from my home (it has an old barn, and an old root cellar where the vixens make their dens, nothing cuter than a bunch of kits running around, then they grow up sigh). The place to which "our" raccoons was taken, was prime habitat. Plenty of bugs and natural foods, fresh water, lots of shelter. The raccoons decided they liked it better here (and after the removal, we noticed we had a lot more 'creepy/crawlies' than we had had before).

"Christina Websell" wrote in message
...

"MaryL" wrote in message
...


"dgk" wrote in message
...

I built a very nice styrofoam home for outside cats, currently
occupied by a small girl cat named Baby. The house is wedged into an
area between a fence and the steps up to my house, so it's quite
stable.

This morning, while leaving for work, I saw a raccoon going into
Baby's house! I did not build this for raccoons. There isn't really
anywhere for a raccoon to hide in the front side of the houses, so I
just left it and headed off to work. But this evening I'm going to
make sure that the raccoon does not get the idea of living there
permanently.

What can I use to discourage the raccoon from staying there?


The only thing I can think of would be to make the opening too small for
a raccoon to enter. As you know, cats do not need much of an opening to
enter and exit. However, the additional problem is that raccoons are
*very strong* and could tear off an ordinary panel if it wanted to use
your new home.

And they have hands.
Glad we do not have them here. My Michigan friend says they can operate
locks to get in to his poultry.


They do indeed! They're very dexterous. I used to have a bird feeder which
hung from a shepherd's hook. The feeder hung from three metal chains which
were joined at the top by large metal S-shaped hook. They attached to the
feeder itself with smaller S-hooks. A raccoon shimmied up the shepherd's
hook pole, knocked down the feeder and made off with two of the metal
chains! It had to have used those nimble hands to detach the chains from
the S-hooks. They're clever little bandits.

Jill

On 2012-03-23, Christina Websell wrote:

I do not agree with this approach, as you merely transfer the problem to
someone else.

Relocation is standard here. The raccoon goes to a WildLife Management
Area where there isn't anyone else. The one nearest me, Cheatham Wildlife
Management Area, is 31 square miles.

Bud

"William Hamblen" wrote in message
m...
On 2012-03-23, Christina Websell
wrote:

I do not agree with this approach, as you merely transfer the problem to
someone else.

Relocation is standard here. The raccoon goes to a WildLife Management
Area where there isn't anyone else. The one nearest me, Cheatham Wildlife
Management Area, is 31 square miles.

That seems OK. You do have more room in the USA.