Well, just help yourself, then!

This blurry surveillance photo, taken just last night, shows a raccoon BRAZENLY STEALING cat food from a dish outside. In daylight! And ENJOYING it! You should have seen his weirdly elongated fingers greedily grasping the tiny kibbles!

Silly 'coon...



But why, Ann, (you may ask) do you leave catfood outside, if not for the raccoons?

Well, it's a funny thing...a few weeks after Peepers was captured, brought inside and tamed (I'll be posting an update soon, detailing his terrific progress)...we started to see this little guy around:



FOR SURE, as per Dave's theory, we have cat hobo signs out back in the woods somewhere..."Free grub, lots of pet-ums - you get fixed, that's not as fun, but otherwise a wonderful establishment".

This new black cat is definitely feral, as he hisses if you get too close. He also seems pretty young, as when he's not hissing, he's meowing plaintively.

*mew mew hiss mew*

So he's a little confused about humans still. He must have been around people at some point, though, because while talking to him, he wouldn't look up unless you said "pretty kitty", at which point he'd look at you.

We're trying to laugh about it, but our hearts ache for this little abandoned kitten, who looks to be around the same age as Peepers (his brother perhaps? He's got an identical splash of white on his chest), but obviously had a much harder time of it than Peepers did.

This new guy is a real beauty though - such a beautiful rich black - and looks pretty healthy - he ate at first like a starving cat, but he seems "caught up" now, and eats a reasonable amount slowly now. And look at the pic - we've got enough trust going with him that we've earned the "tail tip curl" of happiness/relaxation. It used to be straight out, stiff as a board and very tense. (Want to learn what your own kitty is saying with his tail? Check out Kitty Angels for a bunch of cat body language signals.) And for the last couple of days, he's taken to flopping over on his side, which I hear is a signal to me that he doesn't pose any threat - poor little guy, I knew that already!

I'll keep y'all posted on this new, furry black development.