I woke up and she was rolling around on the bedroom floor.

I should back up a little.  My wife and I have been having a bit of an argument lately.  Our cat will stay out late (ignoring my plaintive cries for her to come back in), and I’ll want to leave the patio door open so that she can come back in at her leisure.  That way, I don’t have to get out of bed at 3 a.m. to open the door for her when she starts meowing beneath our bedroom window.  My wife is worried that an animal will find its way into the house.  “Yes,” I respond, “an animal such as our cat.”  I always insist that with both a cat and dog on patrol, and having lowered the fence to keep skunks out, wild animals aren’t going to wander into our house.

So last night I woke up at about two in the morning to hear the cat fiddling around with a plastic bag on our bedroom floor.  I turned on the light (confirming that what I heard was, in fact, the cat) and headed downstairs to put her away in the garage along with the dog.  Imagine my surprise when I crossed through the kitchen to see a large raccoon casually loitering on the patio outside.

I closed the patio door, and then decided it would be a good idea to let my dog chase the raccoon away.  I thought a few barks would spook the raccoon, and he wouldn’t come back.  This was, like many ideas conceived at 2 a.m., a terrible one.  I brought her outside, where an agonizing amount of time passed before she even noticed the raccoon.  She then quietly approached to within several feet, sniffing.  I never expected the raccoon to stand his ground.  But stand he did.  Perhaps “arched” is a better description.  He hissed, like a cat.  Frightened for the sake of my dog, I grabbed one of my sandals and hurled it at him – scoring a direct hit – and he finally took off.  And then of course my dog finally started barking, chasing the coon across the yard until he climbed the fence and leapt into the trees.

After a while I got the dog calmed down, gave her a treat, and put her back to bed.  Now, I feel terrible about putting my dog in danger like that.  But with regards as to whether a wild animal will find his way into the house…this is a photo I took this morning, looking outside through our patio door.  Note the direction of travel the paw prints indicate.

Meanwhile, the cat could give two shits about anything that happened during this whole ordeal.

UPDATE:

This is the candle we normally keep on top of the toilet tank in the downstairs bathroom.  The scented candle.

Fire cleanses all.

Perhaps I’ll let Gordon Gano offer a suggestion as to how I should deal with this dilemma.