My cat Spike is very laid back . He’s a lover, not a fighter, so it was with surprise that one morning as I was feeding him his daily ration of cat food, I saw two scratches on his nose. He ate the food like he was famished, instead of taking a few bites then going somewhere to think the situation over. Normally he would then come back to his bowl and begin to eat again. At the time I didn’t know there were raccoons eating his food at night.

Spike sleeps in the garage. He has a cat door to the outside, so he comes and goes as he pleases. Only on the coldest winter nights does he sleep in the house, preferring the solitude of his own kingdom where there is always silence after dark. His quiet time was shattered one night a couple of hours after dinner. I heard a noise in the garage that sounded like something falling from a shelf. I opened the door to the garage and saw a large raccon scurrying from the cat’s bowl to the opening in the pet door. He scooted through the door to the outside, then turned around and stuck his head back through the door, staring at me as if I should be sorry for interrupting his dinner.

The next day surveying the damage to my exterior door, where the raccon had scratched and torn at the pet door to get inside the garage, I did some studying about the subject of raccoon removal. I found out that they are nocturnal animals, sleeping all day and feeding and roaming at night. I also learned that there are ways to remove raccoons without shooting them. They are as follows:

Remove their food supply! This sounded like such a good idea that I tried it. I brought the cat’s dish into the house. That didn’t deter the raccoon in the least. He couldn’t see the food, so he chewed the lid off the five gallon containers that held the cat food, scattering it all over the garage. This dampened my spirits somewhat, but I was determined to drive him from our house forever!

Play the radio loudly in the areas the raccoon has invaded! They will think someone is talking and stay away! I tuned the radio in the garage to a station that played rap music all night, then turned up the volume. I figured if that didn’t do the trick nothing would. It didn’t work! Somehow he climbed up a bookshelf onto the top of a refrigerator where I had stored the cat food. He pushed it off onto the floor, dry cat food bouncing on the concrete floor like raindrops on a roof.

Trap the animals. I called the city animal control people and they brought me a trap. This was a big cage that would catch the raccoon without hurting it. The theory is that the raccoons would enter the trap, stepping on the trip mechanism as they ate the bait, (cat food), thus tripping the trap door. The raccoons would be caught, the city would then remove the animal to a safe place, miles away from my house and all would be peaceful again. Wrong! The only thing I caught was my cat Spike! Twice!

I learned that those traps do work, but raccoons are very intelligent. You have to put concrete blocks or some kind of barrier around the sides of the trap so they won’t put their paws into the cage and grab the food without springing the trap. Raccoons have paws with fingers that enable them to grasp food and stuff it into their mouths.

By this time I realized I had a family of raccooons. By now I had seen five; two adults and three young ones. The young ones let me take their pictures while munching on Spike’s cat food. I reward them for allowing me a photo shoot. The older ones wait patiently outside the door until I finish shooting. They’ll finish up the food when I go back into the house. Spike the cat is sprawled in an old chair, yawning at the raccoons.

My wife thinks I’m nuts to have fallen under the spell of the adolescent raccoons. Since one of the young raccoons tries to get into the house every time the Maybe I am, but they are a lot of fun. I’ve ordered a sure-fire raccoon repellant that I know will work. It’s coyote urine. Sprinkled around the area the raccoons frequent, it will scare them away. They’re afraid of coyotes because they are one of the natural predators of raccoons. If this doesn’t work, I’ll order wolf urine.

Bob Alexander is the author and sole owner of this article.
He is greatly experienced in the art of southern barbequing and leisure activity, including Raccoon survival.

Learn to enjoy yourself with more of Bob’s ideas.

Visit => bluemarlinbob.com bluemarlinbob.com
and => homeandgardenbob.com homeandgardenbob.com

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Think about the word “intelligence”. What is meant by saying that an animal is intelligent? How can you tell whether animals are really intelligent? After all, animals cannot speak and they do not use words. They cannot express ideas nor can they learn history or spelling.

Still, animals are a capable of doing many things. Perhaps your goldfish swims to the surface looking for food when you move near its tank. Or your cat may ring the doorbell when it wants to enter the house. Many other animals can even do tricks and tasks. Circuses are filled with dancing bears, playful sea lions, hard-working elephants and prancing horses. Such behavior is often wrongly perceived as signs of intelligence. As you’ll see, performing tricks is not truly a sign of intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to reason. It is the sudden flash of an idea, or the ability to solve a new problem directly and also by using previous experiences. Performing tricks and tasks do not require the ability to think, to reason on, or to have ideas.

Tricks can be mastered through special kinds of learning. One way of learning is through trial and error. Another is through conditioning responses. It is important to understand how such learning behavior works. Then we will be able to understand the differences between tricks and truly intelligent behavior.

One of the hardest problems for psychologists is to figure out ways to test intelligence. Conditioned responses are not signs of intelligence. Nevertheless, they are part of an animal’s behavior, so they may help psychologists compare differences among the learning styles of different animals. Animals are also conditioned in other ways. They can learn to avoid a place or an object by being given a mild, harmless electric shock. Some can even be forced to change their normal behavior. Almost all animals from the flatworm up can be conditioned. Another kind of learning takes place through trial and error. The most famous kind of trial and error method is the maze.

Mazes are all based on the same idea; that is, an animal that is placed in an entrance must find the exit. As it proceeds, it finds a series of branches. The animal must make a choice at each branch or fork. If it chooses the wrong one, it comes to a dead end. Then it must go back to take the other path. After a number of times the animal can run through the maze without making mistakes. The reward at the end is a piece of food for the hungry animal. Mazes can be very simple or very difficult, depending on the objectives of the psychologists. Experiments have shown that ants can master very complicated mazes, as well as frogs, turtles, rats, cockroaches and crabs.

Another way to study trial and error at learning is to place an animal in a box. Food is placed outside and the animal can reach the food only by unlocking a door. Then the animal must open the same door to get back into the box. In both cases the problem is the same: figuring out a lock to open a door. It has been found that raccoons can learn to open really complicated locks. Monkeys can also open locks in a special order, but are sometimes difficult to work with because of their bad tempers. At first, humans took as long as monkeys to open locks in a special order. But once they learned, they were much faster in opening them. The reason humans took so long is a fairly simple one. There is no way to figure out the order by looking at the locks because learning the order is a form of trial and error learning. Insight or reasoning does not help here any more than in mazes. Thus, in the first stages of trial and error learning, humans were not fast either.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to animals-guide.com/ Animals

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Tags: raccoons

Like many older breeds, the origin of the Maine Coon is unclear and steeped in rumor. Some believe Maine Coons, also known as American Longhair, American Shag, American Forest Cat, American Snughead and Maine Trick Cat, are a cross between semi-domestic wild cats and raccoons (doubtful if not impossible). Others believe that Marie Antoinette sent her beloved Angoras to America for safety. They escaped and inbred with wild cats. Still others believe a cat was brought to Maine by Captain Coon and the cat escaped to live in the wilds of Maine.

Whatever the origins, it is generally agreed that the Maine Coon is the one of the oldest Native American breed of cat and they were an established domestic and hunting cat by the 1800s, but were not recognized as an actual breed of cat until 1967. Maine Coons are a hearty breed due to the New England winters they endured early on. This has resulted in a semi-long shaggy coat in almost all colors that makes it look like a wild Lynx. This coat does require regular grooming, which is enjoyed by the cat.

Maine Coons males will reach an average weight of thirteen to eighteen pounds and females of nine to twelve pounds, though with their thick coats, they may look larger. They mature slowly and are not considered adult until somewhere between ages three and five (when they stop growing) and will live approximately twelve years.

Maine Coons do enjoy their human companions, but do not need their attention. They prefer instead, to spend time with them in the same room, but not necessarily to interact. They are not a lap cap, and can be quiet independent, but will follow people into other rooms to be near them. Unlike many breeds, Maine Coons do not like to jump or perch in high places, instead preferring to chase things on the ground.

Some Maine Coons can be trained to play fetch and generally do well with children, thanks to their loving nature. This breed is generally healthy but can be prone to hip dysplasia and cardiomyopathy. Some Maine Coons are born with an extra toe, though this does not mean anything for them medically, it will only disqualify them from being shown.

There is a website that has great information on Maine Coon and most other breeds of cats. It has details that pertain to a cat breeds health, grooming, living conditions, best food choices and more, the website is called: Dog And Cat Facts, and can be found at this url:

dogandcatfacts.com

By Robert W. Benjamin

Copyright © 2007

You may publish this article in your ezine, newsletter, or on your web site as long as it is reprinted in its entirety and without modification except for formatting needs or grammar corrections.

Robert W. Benjamin has been in the software business on the internet for over 6 years, and has been producing low-cost software for the past 25 years. He first released products on the AMIGA and C64 computer systems in the late 1970’s-80’s.

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Warren Harding was followed in the White House by the greatest White House zookeeper in our history, Calvin Coolidge. The collection of animals in the Coolidge White House exceeded even the Teddy Roosevelt White House in both numbers and varieties of animals.

Coolidge had the usual “normal” pets. He had a dog named Paul Pry and a cat named Tiger. One day, when Tiger could not be found, Coolidge asked the local radio stations to announce a “missing cat” bulletin. Tiger was found, but later ran away again, and was never found.

Paul Pry was an Airedale originally named Laddie Buck. He also had a terrier named Peter Pan and a white collie named Rob Roy. Rob Roy, originally named Oshkosh, appeared in the famous official portrait of First Lady Grace Coolidge, which is still in the White House today. Their other white collie was called Prudence Prim, and their Shetland sheepdog was named Calamity Jane. They had a couple of chows named Tiny Tim and Blackberry, a brown collie named Ruby Rough, a police dog named King Kole, a yellow collie named Bassie and a bird dog named Palo Alto. In addition to the dogs, they also had a variety of birds which included, among others, canaries named Nip and Tuck, a white canary named Snowflake, a thrush named Old Bill, a goose named Enoch and mockingbirds belonging to the First Lady. The Coolidge family also had cats in the White House. Tiger, mentioned above, was an alley cat. Another cat was named Blacky.

But the other animals kept at the Coolidge White House were indeed unique. Coolidge kept two raccoons named Rebecca and Horace. Rebecca used to ride around on Coolidge’s shoulders. He also had a donkey named Ebenezer, and bobcat named Smokey, lion cubs, a wallaby, a bear, and a pigmy hippo. There has never been such an amazing and unique collection of animals in the White House, before or since.

Herbert Hoover loved dogs. His favorite was a police dog named King Tut. His other dogs included fox terriers named Big Ben and Sonnie, a Scotch collie named Glen, an Eskimo dog named Yukon, a wolfhound named Patrick, a sitter named Eaglehurst Gillette, an elkhound named Weejie, and another police dog named Pat.

Franklin Roosevelt was also a great dog lover. He had a number of dogs including a German shepherd named Major, a Scotch terrier named Meggie, a Llewellyn setter named Winks, an English sheepdog named Tiny, a Great Dane named (appropriately) President, and his son Elliot’s mastiff named Blaze.

But the most famous of FDR’s dogs, and possibly the most famous of all Presidential pets, was Fala, a black Scotch terrier. Fala starred in a movie-short that told of a day in the life of a First Pet. But Fala became even more famous in the 1944 election. Franklin Roosevelt took Fala everywhere, but on a trip to the Aleutian Islands, Fala got left behind. Republicans accused President Roosevelt of sending a destroyer back for Fala, at a cost of eight million dollars.

In a famous speech to the Teamsters Union on September 23, 1944, FDR turned the tables on the Republican charges. In this amusing and popular speech, FDR said, “These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me — on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No . . . they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent the attacks, and my family doesn’t resent the attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know — you know — Fala’s Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers . . . had concocted a story that I had left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him — at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars — his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself . . . But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.” It was the most effective speech of the campaign, and it can be said the Fala, the First Dog, helped FDR win his historic fourth term as President. Fala became immensely popular with the American people. Today, at the FDR Memorial, Fala backpacks, pencils and mugs are available for purchase.

Surprisingly, considering his farm background and upbringing, Harry Truman was not fond of animals. His daughter Margaret had an Irish setter named Mike. There was also an “unwanted dog” named Feller. Mike was only there a short while.

The Eisenhower White House had only one pet, a Weimaraner named Heidi.

John Kennedy, having young children, had many pets during his tenure in the White House. There was Charlie, Caroline Kennedy’s Welsh terrier. There was also a cat named Tom Kitten, and canary named Robin, and parakeets named Bluebell and Marybelle. One of the more famous of the Kennedy pets was Macaroni, Caroline’s favorite pony. Macaroni received thousands of fan letters from children around the country. There were other ponies named Tex and Leprechaun as well. The First Lady also had a horse, named Sardar. Other Kennedy pets included dogs named Shanon, Wolf and Clipper and a rabbit named Zsa Zsa.

Another famous First Pet, for political as well as family reasons, was a dog named Pushinka. Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev gave this dog to Caroline Kennedy. Pushinka was a mongrel, and the offspring of a dog sent into space by the Soviet space program. Charlie (listed above) and Pushinka had puppies, hailed as the first Soviet-American litter in history. The puppies were named Butterfly, White Tips, Blackie and Streaker.

Lyndon Johnson was very found of animals, especially dogs. In addition to a number of hamsters and lovebirds were a number of dogs, mostly beagles. Johnson started with Beagle and Little Beagle and a mongrel named Yuki. Johnson and Yuki liked to perform by throwing back their heads and howling (Johnson called it singing) together. But the most famous of the Johnson pets were beagles named Him and Her. They often accompanied Johnson as he walked around the White House grounds with reporters. Johnson created a national furor when he held up Him by the ears, stating that the yelps were sounds of playful pleasure. Animal lovers from all over the nation protested.

The Nixons had several dogs. They had a poodle named Vicki, a terrier named Pasha, and an Irish setter named King Timahoe. But their most famous dog was not actually a First Pet. When Richard Nixon was first running for Vice President, he was accused of financial irregularities. He made a speech on national television, one of the first politicians to effectively use the medium, to defend himself. The most famous part of the speech was when Nixon movingly told of taking just one personal gift, a dog given him for his daughters and which he was going to keep no matter what because his daughters loved that dog. The dog’s name was Checkers, and the speech became known as the Checkers speech, and is credited with saving Nixon’s political career.

There were only two pets in the Ford White House. Susan Ford had a Siamese cat named Shan. The President had a Golden Retriever named Liberty. The popular TV comedy show “Saturday Night Live” often featured skits about the President, and often included Liberty. Liberty had puppies in the White House, which also made national news.

President Jimmy Carter had a dog named, appropriately, Grits. His daughter Amy had a Siamese cat named Misty Malarky Ying Yang.

When President Reagan moved into the White House, he and Mrs. Reagan had a Bouvier des Flandres (a breed of sheepdog) puppy named Lucky. Lucky, however, wasn’t. He grew up very quickly into a very large dog. There was a famous picture of Lucky dragging the President across the White House lawn in front of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. It was soon thereafter exiled to the Reagan ranch in California, where it lived very happily. Lucky was replaced in the White House by a (much) smaller King Charles spaniel named Rex. The Reagans had many dogs and horses at their ranch in California.

George and Barbara Bush also had one of the more famous First Pets, and certainly the most accomplished First Pet of all times. Whereas Fala starred in a movie, Millie, a Springer spaniel, supposedly wrote a book. Millie’s book was on the New York Times best-seller list for months. Interestingly, the book was listed in the category of nonfiction. One of Millie’s puppies, Ranger, stayed on with his mother and the First Family.

Today, the senior First Pet is Socks the cat. There was much speculation as to Sock’s reaction when another pet was added to the household. In December of 1997, a chocolate Labrador retriever named Buddy moved into the White House.

It remains to be seen whom the American people will elect as the next First Pet. This may be one of the deciding factors in this close race for the White House. Consider carefully, choose wisely and well. History is waiting for your answer.

More good pet articles. ezpetz.com ezpetz.com

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Tags: kitten, raccoons

In a word, Yes. To protect their health from all sorts of microscopic critters, cat vaccinations are essential to all felines. And not just once, but sometimes annually.

Even an indoor cat needs them because there is always the possibility they may escape and be exposed to harmful diseases or another cat can bring in a pathogen.

There are usually 2 categories of feline vaccinations: core that are necessary for all cats, and non-core which are used only under certain circumstances.

Core Vaccinations

They help protect your cat from:

* Feline herpes virus 1(FVH1),

* Feline calicivirus (FCV),

* Feline panleukopenia virus (FPV), and

* rabies.

After initial inoculations with dead virus vaccines and a booster at one year, the FHV1, FCV, and FPV vaccines can be slowed to 3-year intervals, if your cat is in a low risk environment. After initial rabies shots, they are recommended annually.

The diseases that core cat vaccinations prevent are:

Feline Herpesvirus 1 (FHV1), also known as feline rhinotracheitis. It manifests as respiratory symptoms, such as sneezing, nasal discharge, rhinitis (inflammation of the nose) and conjunctivitis (inflammation of the eyelid-lining membrane). It can also strike the reproductive tract, causing pregnancy complications. FHV1 affects cats around the world.

Feline Calicivirus (FCV) is a common viral disease, usually fairly mild, but can result mouth sores, upper respiratory symptoms, pneumonia, and possibly arthritis. A flu-like condition, FCV and FHV1 make up 85 - 90% of upper respiratory feline infections.

Feline Panleukopenia Virus is a far more severe, contagious disease affecting cats, kittens, and raccoons. Typical symptoms include: diarrhea, vomiting, low white blood cell count, and seizures. FPV invades rapidly growing cells, and is so widespread that nearly all cats are exposed within their first year of life.

Rabies is transmitted from the saliva of wild animals to unvaccinated domestic animals and even humans, usually through a bite. Rabies is nearly always fatal. Prevention is the only hope.

Non-Core Vaccinations

Non-core cat vaccinations are given only to cats when circumstances indicate that they may be at particular risk for a certain disease.

Feline Leukemia Virus (FeLV) vaccination is recommended for outdoor cats or cats having contact with other felines of unknown FeLV status. After 16 weeks of age, acquired resistance to infection develops, so it’s most effective for kittens and young cats. The middle word, leukemia, says it all.

Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV) has only been on the market since 2002. This is also known as feline AIDS. It is not as effective as those for other viruses, and previous vaccination may not rule out infection. When deciding whether to get your cat vaccinated for FIV, research your options and discuss the matter with your veterinarian until you feel comfortable. When possible, separate the cat immediately and if it is a kitten, retest in 2 months.

Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP) vaccine has a short immunity span, and its effectiveness is under debate. The rate of FIP incidents is very low — in single-cat households, only 1 in 5,000 cats are infected.

Bordetella Bronchiseptica affects mostly young kittens, causing lower respiratory tract disease. In older cats it is uncommon and can be treated with antibiotics. Vaccination is recommended only for kittens in a multiple cat environment.

The battle of disease and science rages on. Cat vaccinations put the winning odds on your side.

For more info, see

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