Our Little Fur Family

When I was young, my grandmother had one of the original editions of the book, the Little Fur Family. It was a small book, covered in soft rabbit fur and was about a tiny little fur child. I absolutely adored it! One year, my aunt gave me my own copy of the book. How exciting! The big difference is that my edition is covered in faux fur. Even though that rabbit fur is lovely to pet, the faux thing is probably for the best since, according to wikipedia, an estimated 15,000 bunnies were killed and skinned to cover those books. Yikes!

In any case, my Little Fur Family book stays in it's box and is used as a decorative piece on the lawyers shelves I have in the sun room. It's now a special treat for Dylan to get to pull the box off the shelf and then pull the fur book out for reading time. He seems to adore it almost as much as I did as a child. It's fun to pass on those types of memories\loves to your child!

What does the Fur Family book have to do with this post? Other than what I just said, not a thing. I actually came up with the title to tell about a different fur family in our lives but just couldn't resist sharing that bit of family memorabilia.

Here's the story of our fur family.

Mike's been leaving food out for (what we think is) a stray neighborhood cat for several months. Sometimes we see the black kitty come up in the evening to nibble from the bowl. However, in the last several months, we've had another critter come to eat the free food - a raccoon! He visited frequently enough that we felt we should name him. As we sat watching him through the back door one night, Mike and I were throwing around some names - Bob, Bill, etc. when Dylan yelled out "Kafu!" I think that was his way of saying raccoon but the name seemed to fit the bill. Kafu it is.

A month or so ago, we realized Kafu is not a he. Kafu is a she and she was apparently nursing some babies somewhere. Well, a couple of weeks ago, we got a glimpse of the whole family - Kafu and 4 babies, crawling over our back fence. I grabbed the camera and Mike and I tried to watch them for a while but they quickly bustled over more fences and into other neighbor's yards out of sight. We decided to put out some food on the porch and wait.

Lo and behold, a little while later, Kafu came up for dinner. Soon, a baby followed her up the stairs!

And another and another and another until all 4 babies were there hoping to grab some morsels.

Kafu was not sharing her find so Mike kept opening the door and throwing out handfuls of cat food at the kiddos. Soon, we got very brave (or very stupid), and watched them chow with the door opened. As they were very quick to jump back at even the slightest movement from us and the door was in good slamming position, it wasn't all that dangerous of a situation.

Kafu in the back, babies in the front.

After the food was gone, they left. We haven't seen them since. I know lots of folks don't think raccoons are great to have flitting about your property and they're probably right. But, these guys have yet to cause us any harm or headache and have provided us with some great entertainment. So, we're happy to have them to visit as long as this relationship continues in that fashion. They are our little fur family.