On Late Night Surprises That Don't End Up In the Washing Machine the Next Morning

Tonight I got up to pee in the middle of the night and was confused when the cat didn't immediately trip and kill me.

After satisfying my basic natural urges I decided to lay down on the living room floor and taunt the cat with how appealing and flop-worthy I am as a human. Clearly, he would run immediately to my side and profess his unrelenting kitty love for me.

This was not the case.

Shocking.

And yet it was, because 1) this cat is very unfettered by the superiority that imbues all other cats with their mystic powers, and 2) he seemed really really interested in what was outside the sliding glass doors.

I assumed a bird or something. A squirrel maybe. Something we see every day that was just stupid enough to wake up in the middle of the night and stumble upon the knowledge that the birdseed and nuts littering the porch do not magically disappear when the bright glowy sky orb goes away forever or until morning.

After maybe a minute or two humoring him at the cat's side, watching him pace back and forth, staring out into the black, I gave up on being able to see what it was he was looking at. It might have been nothing. He stares at nothing sometimes. Quiet often in fact. For hours.

In my vastly superior mind I contrived a trick I would play on the cat. Working under the assumption that he was seeing either something familiar at a weird time or merely his reflection in the glass of the sliding door, I thought I would flick on the outside light, thus illuminating the small thing outside or changing the lighting conditions and erasing his reflection, utterly upheaving his world.

This was not the assumption I should have been working under.

For the record, the common suburban life form known for scrounging edibles out of anything and trespassing on human property in the bleak of the night is the North American raccoon. The raccoon, ladies and gentlemen.

And holy mother of Buddha was he fat. We're talking a good 25 lbs minimum here. It's getting cold. He was obviously eating ever last bit of food he could in preparation for being really fat and really lazy for the next few months. He had back fat. I did some basic Cro-Magnon math and decided I could feed myself and three friends and keep my head and hands warm if only I had a super-pointy stick nearby. (I have many, but as an evolved man I also love furry little squishy things like comfy sweatpants and the funner parts of the fairer sex.)

After maybe fifteen minutes of staring and determining this raccoon did not give the slightest crap about either my presence or the cat's I got bored and tried to take a photo with my phone, but without a decent light source I got nothing, which was disappointing because I was very eager to communicate the HUGE FREAKIN SIZE of this raccoon.

So then I got my Rubik's cube and waited a few more minutes and when I wasn't looking the big dude bolted from the deck, leaving me and the cat both rather idle and upset at his absence.

I have just this instant decided to name this raccoon Terry. Marvelous.