I ran into a whole family of skunks a few years ago. I’d taken a walk through a local nature preserve, and on my way out my progress was halted by a mother skunk and all her cute little babies milling about in the middle of the path. “Hmmm,” I thought, “I think I’ll wait over there.” They completely ignored me, and eventually mama skunk led her babies off the path and into the brush, and I was able to proceed.
Something like this?
Ahahahahahahahaha. Ha. Hahahahaha. Raccoon. At the zoo.
Hahahahahaha.
It probably snuck in to steal the other animals’ feed.
The skunks up here are of the opinion that they have right of way on all the sidewalks – not unreasonably; I’m at a four-year university, so the skunks have usually been here longer than the students. They’re kind of like cats only grouchier, so if you keep a respectful distance and don’t act like a threat, they will usually allow you to escape unscathed.
By Og, I want just one of those to release on campus the next time a gaggle of drunken freshmen discover that the local Target sells SuperSoakers! I keep telling the grounds crew that they should cage the idiots and leave the skunks alone, but evidently the cages don’t come large enough to confine students. Tragic.
Welcome to Bakersfield 
.
See, our “zoo” is really just a place for local animals that are hurt, need to rehab, or can’t be put back in the wild. So, while there are two bold eagles and three bears, there are also raccoons, kit foxes, a donkey, and rattle snakes.
We had an Siamese/Himalayan cross who would go nose to-nose with raccoons, even at the old age of 14. The cat and raccoon would sniff one another’s faces, make godawful noises at one another and then go their separate ways.
Other cats we’ve had would share the overturned garbage can buffet with raccoon and , again, cats and raccoons would sound like they wanted to kill each other, but wouldn’t.
Did the neighbor lady kill your cat, hide the body, and blame the raccoon, I wonder? I’ve seen cats and raccoons gang up on dogs who wanted in on their feasts, so I could believe a raccoon killing a small dog and possibly even eating it, but cats and raccoons just jive talk one another, for the most part.
Although I wouldn’t put it past a raccoon to kill a cat, I would think it much more likely that the cat was killed by some other means, like hit by a car and then dragged itself into that lady’s yard and died, then the raccoon came along.
Don’t feel too bad. The Berlin zoo, one of the largest and best in the world (they got Knut!), had garden variety chickens.
But I laughed at that, too.
Hee hee hee, bold eagles.
“Hey, baby, I’m all-American. Do you want to get with this? Ah, baby, don’t be like that. Me love you loooong time. You bitch! Why you gotta be so unpatriotic?”
[sub]Bolding mine, incidentally.[/sub]
That’s what I was thinking too. I did some vounteer work at a wildlife rehab center back in my highschool days. The scavengers are lazy bastards. I can’t imagine a raccoon making the effort to hunt and kill a cat, unless the coon is mad with hunger or is rabid. Raccoons are thrilled to find roadkill or other carion though. That’s good eatin’!
I’ve only seeen raccoons actually fight with animlas that charged them (dog, coyote, Mom with broomstick) or when they had something particularly tasty and thought they could win the big intimidation stand-off. They are really aggressive, but it’s mostly for show. Like skunks, they’ll usually move off if something bigger and meaner comes along. But if something attacks them, they’ll put up one helluva fight.
I do know of one raccoon that turned up with a chicken carcass. We don’t know if he killed the chicken himself, liberated the carcass from a farm’s dumpster, or stole it from another animal. It wouldn’t surpirse me at all if he did kill it himself, 'cause that particular coon was a big and nasty mofo, but he probably found it or stole it.