My cat Toto is aging,and as she ages,her body is failing her.Mentally,she seems sharp,but after nearly sixteen years,Toto's hips are causing her obvious trouble.In fact,they make it so that she can't use a litter box effectively.She tries to squat ,but mostly she just pisses out the back end of the box. I spent the summer working with my vet to find things to help Toto,but nothing works.Since we can't stand the smell of cat urine in the house,two weeks ago I took drastic measures.I _ Toto outside.(She gets to come in while I work,but I put her out for 80%of the day and night.) Because Toto now lives outside,she eats and drinks outside.I' ve set up a heating pad on the porch.and given her own food and water area nearby.She seems perfectly content with this arrangement except when she's out of food,or she wants to be petted. Strangely enough,she's been out of food a lot lately."I think another cat is eating Toto's food."I told Kris when I first noticed how quickly she was going through her bowl. "Actually,"I said a couple of days later,"maybe it's a dog.Whoever is eating Toto's food keeps knocking the bowl over." But a few days after that,I realized that the food thief probably wasn't even a dog.Whatever the critter was,it was messy.  Every morning,Toto's water dish was filled with mud.The food bowl was tipped over and the porch scattered with mud and debris ."I' ll bet it's a coon ,"I told Kris.Though we live in a residential neighborhood not far from Portland,we' ve seen plenty of raccoons in the six years since we moved in. Today I got to see the cat-food thievery first-hand.Turns out it's not one raccoon-it's a family of four.I was lucky enough to have my camera handy as they performed their daring raid:My favorite part of this video is how Toto simply sits on her heating pad and watches the raccoons eat her food.She isn't bothered at all. What does the writer like most about what he filmed?
How Toto fought against the raccoons. A family of raccoons stole the food together. Toto's casual attitude toward the raccoons. How the raccoons made the writer's porch dirty.