Woman Attacked by Raccoon She Thought Was Her Cat

When I was a kid, we had two cats who came and went as they pleased via a cat door in our basement. Their names were Georgie and Gracie, which isn’t really relevant to the story—I’m just mentioning it because RIP, MY SWEET LADIES—and we were confused because they seemed to be not only eating massive amounts of food, they’d also started scattering it all over the kitchen floor at night.

One night, my dad got up and shambled through the dark kitchen to go to the bathroom, and discovered an ENORMOUS BEAST crouched on the kitchen counter. My dad went, “Gaaahhhh!” and the thing went “HSSSSSSSS!!!” and it jumped off the counter and ran straight out the cat door and into the night.

IT WAS A RACCOON. IN OUR HOUSE. A BIG FAT RACCOON. ON OUR COUNTER. EATING THE CAT FOOD. The raccoon had clearly been coming into our house for months without getting caught. The raccoon, I must admit, was a genius.

Anyway, the same thing happened to this 88-year-old lady, but the encounter didn’t end so innocuously for her:

Officers responded at about 11 p.m. to a report of a wild animal attack at a home on Brinsmade Road, Capt. Ronald Smith said Monday in a press release.

Police found that the woman was attacked after a raccoon followed her cat into her home through a sliding glass door. The woman had heard a scratching sound outside the door and opened it to let her cat in, Smith said. When the woman attempted to pet what she thought was her cat, the raccoon attacked her, biting her on the elbow, hand, forearm, lip and chin.

The woman was transported to the hospital by an American Medical Response ambulance.

The raccoon charged two officers when they arrived at the house, according to Smith. The raccoon was caught and euthanized “before it inflicted further damage,” Smith said.