That damn raccoon came in the house again!

You wouldn't believe the nerve of that raccoon.

He sneaks in the cat door -- unbelievable because this sucker is five times the size of the flap -- and tries to eat the cat food.

When I was pregnant, we discovered that the raccoon was entering the house only after he began gnawing through unopened bags of cat food. Until then we just thought our cats had healthy appetites. But the bite marks on the food were distinctly NOT feline. Plus, the food bags were being molested directly on the kitchen counter.

This meant that a wild animal was wandering on the surfaces upon which I prepared food for me and my unborn child. You would think that this would have bothered me, but no. I was in something of a "mother of the universe" state of bliss, where all living creatures fell under my maternal pact of protection in my new sorority of womanhood with Mother Earth.

Reluctantly, and at the behest of my grossed-out friends, I blocked the cat door at night and our raccoon found other pursuits in the neighborhood. I read that raccoons only need to be thwarted a few times before they'll quit pestering you -- they are too smart to repeatedly go down paths that don't result in food.

But JUST NOW, several months later, that damn raccoon came in the cat door! The cat door is by my office and I heard it swing open in a distinctly un-Stanley-like fashion. Stanley, our three-legged cat, has sounds unique to his own maneuvering. Suspecting that one of our kittens had found the door, and hoping to catch that kitten, I flipped on the outside light.

There he was: a bandit-faced sharp-toothed maniac raccoon hoofing it toward our back fence. I do not have pregnant blissful feelings about raccoons anymore. I want them GONE and away from my daughter, who is sleeping, trustfully and tiny, in her nursery. I want to kick their ass in a dramatic and final fashion. I do not want wild animals in my house anymore.

The kittens, always having been indoor creatures, were very impressed with their first raccoon encounter, it seems. Their tails were big and cylindrical with fear, and they looked at each other, completely scandalized.

I am going to choose to believe that those kittens scared off the raccoon, and would do so again.

Instead, I secretly know that the food selection was probably unappealling. It was organic stuff, which cats, and it seems raccoons, abhor.