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Raccons ? Had 3 Rac Families Living In My Yard For 5 Years.this Is The First Year They Remained In The Woods. It All Started With Leaving Cat Food Out In The Day. I Had 14 Cats And A Few Were Feral,so I Left The Food Outside. The Racs Just Turned Night Into Day. They Became Tame And Every Season The Mothers Would Bring Their Babies To The Stairs To Eat. I Was Even Playing With The YounGsters,holding Their Paws,hand Feeding(have Some Very Cute Pics).last Year, Was A Little Too Much,i Counted 15 Eating Outside.i Was Going Thru 4+ Bags Of Cat Food A Week! So I Did What I Should Of Done And Had To Do, Was Take The Majority Of Cats(that Were Born In My Yard ,but Not Mine) To The No Kill Shelter.i Stopped Leaving Any Food Outside.i Did This In Nov When They Go Into A False Semi- Hibernation.since Then,they Have Been Here A Few Times At The Door,early In The Evening, But I Stopped Talking And Mothering Them.and That Made A Big Differece. They Will Go After Cats If They Think The Cats Are Taking "their Food."(and If They Are Hungry And Aggresive They May Try To Kill.)
I Did Trap 2 Of My Most Tame Because They Were So Bonded To Me They Had To Go. I Took Them To The Redwoods. Racs Are Like Cats,they Are Territorial. I Would Not Advice Relocating Them. They Will Go Or Stay Far Enough Away If There Is Not Hint Of Food Or Water. They Like To Wash Up And Water Is Very Important....hope This Helps..jana
interesting story. they actually scare me, but one chased me and my brother as children, so I might just be a big baby.
food is put away at night and locked up when we are not home(I am gonna hose off the porch tomorrow morning just incase)
I wonder if we messed up once and left it out ...mmmmm, it's possible.
I'm leaving food out during the day for my cat, but I've kept him locked in the porch all today. My screen now has a hole in it, but until we get someone out here, we have a baby gate to prevent visitors(rackies) from stopping by..
My kitty is eating now that I'm home, but food is always put away by ten at the latest. We will see what happens tonight. My husband said he heard loud shots last night and thinks he went to bother someone else and got shot.
interesting story. they actually scare me, but one chased me and my brother as children, so I might just be a big baby.
food is put away at night and locked up when we are not home(I am gonna hose off the porch tomorrow morning just incase)
I wonder if we messed up once and left it out ...mmmmm, it's possible.
I'm leaving food out during the day for my cat, but I've kept him locked in the porch all today. My screen now has a hole in it, but until we get someone out here, we have a baby gate to prevent visitors(rackies) from stopping by..
My kitty is eating now that I'm home, but food is always put away by ten at the latest. We will see what happens tonight. My husband said he heard loud shots last night and thinks he went to bother someone else and got shot.
we will see ...thanks for all the info.
KELLY, I WOULD SUGGEST THAT THE FOOD BE IN A PLACE THAT THE RACS(and feral cats) CANT SMELL IT.MAYBE INSIDE THE HOUSE.
Last edited by JANA MANIA; 12-05-2007 at 08:32 PM..
i agree. no more feeding on the porch. for all we know, the racoon could be sitting in a tree high above and watching the cat eat so he KNOWS that food is possible there. it's all about the food.
A couple dozen feral cats live in the creek bed behind our house. I put out cat food on my patio for them.
Coons and possums also live there and sometime they come to eat the cat food. The cats don't seem to mind sharing the food and aren't afraid of the other animals.
Everyone gets along just fine.
Sometimes one of the ferals gets used to me and becomes tame. We have four of them that decided to move into the house and become domesticated. They have gotten their shots, been neutered, gotten micro-chipped and have turned into regular house cats. You would never know that they were once wild.
I wish the coon and possum would get tame would move in. That would be so neat. Of course they would have to learn to use the litter box and not tear up the house.
We have a total of six cats inside and they all use the litter box, but they haven't quite learned about not tearing up the house.
I read somewhere......... to keep them out of garbage cans, to spray the can with ammonia. Wonder if it would work for your screens also .
Ammonia did not work in my situation.
We had a family of raccoons that would go through my trash and our neighbors. These were the BIG plastic trash cans with wheels where the handle would lock the lid in place. It finally reached the point that my neighbor used his tie down straps to tie the lid down on his trashcans - and guess what? The damn things got into cans anyway.
I tried all of the low cost options - ammonia, urine, putting the cans in the middle of no where so it would make it difficult to reach, etc.
I finally startled one and it turn on me and my small dog. From that time on, it was on
To trap, they would charge me $150 per raccoon for them to be trapped and relocated.
Rat poison, on the other hand, only cost $5
And guess what, it only gave them freaking heartburn. They would stop coming over to my house for only a couple days, and then they would come back looking for dinner.
Finally, and miraculously, our local trash provided a special type of trashcan for use with their automatic trash trucks. For some reason, the raccoons could not get in these new ones so I have not seen them around.
What do you think makes you a better person, trying to kill the animals because they are looking in your trash for food, or giving them food so they won't have to dig in your trash.
Anyway, I never understood why people were so protective of their garbage.
Not of my trash but of myself and my dog. Worse yet is if they had acted aggresive with my children.
While it was a pain to clean up my trash everyday, everything I did was non-lethal, until they started getting aggressive. Get violent with me, no big deal as I would punt them across the street. Get violent with my children or other pets, die.
If that makes me a bad person in someone's eye, so be it. I don't live for strangers.
I will add, it would have been easy for me to get a little .22 and just outright kill the raccoons. Did I? Nope, I just kept escalating until they left.
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