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I am guessing I have a resident raccoon, although I have not yet seen one. I feed two cats in our open barn on a window sill over my work bench. Their food is kept in a plastic container in a drawer of the work bench. Something has been regularly raiding the cat food. It is able to open the rather heavy wood handleless drawer and push the lid of the container open. I put a garden latch on the drawer. It is still able to open the drawer about an inch or so and snake its little hands in to push off the lid and feast. I bungied the lid of the container. It tore a hole in the plastic lid and was still able to snatch some food. I bought a heavier duty plastic bin with more secure closures. It appears that the critter was not able to pop the closures, but was able to somehow pry the lid up from the side far enough to get to the food (there were little muddy scratch prints on the inside of the lid this morning). This is all done in an inch or so of free space. My husband wants to set up a trap of some sort - but I am afraid my cats will get caught instead. My dog typically sleeps inside, and I'm thinking of putting her outside to see if she might discourage whatever it is that is raiding the food. Or I continue armoring the drawer. I could put a second gate latch on or some other device to keep the drawer secure. It's just such a pain to go through all the dismantling to feed the cats twice a day. Any luck with raccoons -- or whatever else this might be?
My other option is to try to relocate the cats' feeding area to inside my covered side porch where I feed the dog. My own cat is old (13) and smallish, and is an indoor/outdoor cat. The other cat I feed is a much larger 'walk-on' who I don't encourage anywhere near the house, but do feed because otherwise it bullies my cat out of her food. At one point I tried to feed my cat on the porch with better quality food, but she didn't catch on and kept making a racket at her old feeding station.
Thanks for any ideas or sympathy...
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