Returned home from vacation to discover the cat food supply compromised by raccoons. Used to be, they’d come through the cat door, move a large garbage can aside, open the cabinet door, pull out a 25-lb. bag of cat food and claw it open. We “solved” that one last year by regularly transferring cat food bags into a large sealable plastic container. Now, it seems, they’ve realized that if they pull the whole container out onto the kitchen floor and start gnawing, they can eventually break the plastic and hit paydirt. No one went hungry, but cats are furious about the smell. We hear that placing a transistor radio set to a talk station near the cat door works – will try that next time.
Music: steve hillage :: Knights Templar
Beware of Raccoon Roundworm.
http://www.mass.gov/dfwele/dfw/dfw_roundworm.htm
I worked at a wildlife rescue center and we rehabbed several raccoons. We had a take precautions when dealing with the raccoon’s feeding dishes because of the risk of raccoon roundworm. Raccoons like to handle their food and if their paws are contaminated with roundworm eggs, some of those eggs can be deposited on the food bowls. Likewise with cat dishes.
Vic, the article seems to indicate that roundworm can most easily be transmitted through feces. Do you think there’s any reason to discard the remaining cat food for fear it could be contagious to our cats in non-fecal form?
Don’t know if you’ve seen this project, but it might give you some ideas (there’s no problem so simple that can’t be made more complicated):
http://www.quantumpicture.com/Flo_Control/flo_control.htm
Frankly, rather than image recognition, I think it would be simpler to integrate an RFID reader into the cat door and attach a tag to the collar. If your cats are already chipped, as more and more people are doing, you can even skip the collar…
Mike, the Flo Control is absolutely brilliant, however impractical. We’ll wait for Miles to be old enough to do this as a junior high science project :)