So last night around midnight I dragged the garbage can out to the road for pickup this morning.  I swept the area with my flashlight, on the lookout for things like coyotes and wild dogs and raccoons and shoggoths and socialists and other such rabid monsters, but only found one cat. This I took as a pleasant surprise, given the dearth of cats around here the last few years. He’s a juvenile siamese-patterned cat, and was *reasonably* friendly: he came to within about 4 feet when I called to him, and didn’t overly object as I accompanied him as he hunted the wheat for mice and such. He was.n’t interested in letting me pet him, so I went about my business

This evening I had a rare visit from Junior, who’s looking rather the worse for wear… pretty skinny. He wants *nothing* to do with me, though he will of course eat free food when available.

Tonight around midnight I went out again to check the weather and look at the stars; the sky kept flashing from lightning so I hoped there’d be a show (there wasn’t, sadly… the lightning was much too far away). But I saw the pseudo-siamese from last night, and realized that he was a she, and that she had at least three kittens… one all-black, two more siamese-colored. One of the siamese skittered off and didn’t come back, but the other two were reasonably brave. Mom there is barely bigger than her kittens.

While I was out there watching the cats I heard a nearby rustling sound in a tree near where the one kitten had skittered off. I figured it was the kitten coming back… but it was actually a full grown racoon. I don’t know if it threatened the kitten (or maybe even got it), but lil’ mommacat wasn’t having it, and the two rumbled. And even though the racoon outmassed the cat by several times, I’m happy to report that she successfully drove off the racoon. It was a short battle, but in the end the racoon hightailed it for the tree and the cat stood there hissing at it.