I was lightly debating someone at work yesterday that was wishing harm on a raccoon that killed some stray kittens in his yard the other night. I can understand why city people may not be keen on raccoons, but my stance was that huge, uncontrolled populations of stray cats wasn't really much better, and if nothing else, this is the raccoon's natural home, while the domestic cat is basically an invasive African species.

The other week I was reading about something in the city where they used an otherwise unrelated to the story feral cat colony as a landmark. I questioned why this could be used like it is some permanent location that people would recognize. There are many feral cat colonies, but this one seems to be a constant disputed zone. Large groups of people are steadily feeding the cats while others want to colony broken up, to the point there is now a fence around it as it was subject to multiple arson attempts to remove the cats by one means or another.

The raccoon is simply trying to survive on what is left of the land it was meant to have. It may not be pleasant, but eating unwanted domestic animals keeps the population in control at least as well as anything humans are doing to correct their laxness, and it is ensuring the true local wild inhabitants that remain in very dangerous territory can continue on. The raccoons have an ecological role to play, while the cats are an outside destructive influence. Just because we are more familiar with the cats doesn't give them a greater right to exist there, and I'd argue the raccoons should receive preferential treatment when an action comes down to those 2 choices. And I like domestic cats. But these are not pets, they are uncontrolled non-native wildlife.