10-11"

We’re spoiled in North America when you really think about it. Other continents get poisonous snakes, weird spiders, or giant carnivorous cats roaming their backyards, and we get the one and only trash panda. While they may look like someone smashed a mix of a cat and dog together, raccoons are actually smaller relatives of bears.

One of the reasons they seem to grace our properties and back porches at night is that raccoons are easily adaptable to various environments. They can live in a hollow tree just as happily as they can in abandoned cars. Depending on the car, it can get pretty comfy for them. Their hands resemble human hands, and boy, do they put them to work. They have five fingers and use their hands to collect food, open shells, doors, or trash cans. It’s always fun when they get into your trash can, right?

Raccoons often place food in water before they start to eat it. If you’re an outdoor cat owner like me, you’ll know that if you leave dry cat food outside overnight next to the water bowl, raccoons will absolutely make a mess of things. Next time you forget to bring the food in and wonder why the water looks so gross, it’s because the furry little bandits were dipping the food in the water before they ate it. They do this because they have a highly sensitive sense of touch, and water increases that sensitivity even more. I’m not sure what’s so sensually appealing about dipping cat food in water, but hey, to each their own.