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by narrator
1382 days ago
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Having dealt with an owner away on vacation indoor/outdoor cat and racoon situation, I found the optimal way to handle it. It was a rental, so I couldn't install a microchip cat door. 1. Get feeders that run on a timer and release a fixed amount of food. 2. Duct tape the feeders very securely to a metal box. Put something very heavy in the box to keep the raccoons from flipping the box over. 3. Set the timers so they release enough food for the cat. Have them set to go off a few hours after sunrise. Raccoons hate going out during the day. 4. The cat eats all the food and when the raccoons come at night there is nothing for them. 5. Point a motion activated camera at the feeders so you can fix and make improvements to the duct taping to respond to those clever raccoons and to make sure the cat has enough to eat. |
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Correct. A lot of people freak out when the do see one out during the day because for some reason it is widely believed that they only come out during the day if they are rabid.
Where I am (western Washington) rabies has never been found in the wild raccoon population (or in any wild terrestrial mammal population--it's all bats and domestic animals), but still some people see a raccoon in the daytime and freak out over rabies.
In fact if a raccoon is out during the day the most likely reason is that there is a food shortage and it can't forage enough just at night. Sometimes there is a shortage because something decreased the food supply, and sometimes it is because the raccoon is pregnant and needs more food due to that. Daytime outings due to rabies is way way way below that even in places like the eastern US where rabies is widespread in their raccoon populations.
Every year around here we'll see the neighborhood raccoon start coming around in the daytime for a while, getting plumper and plumper, then she stops coming at all for a while, and then she shows up at night much thinner and with 2 to 5 little ones.