I was raised on a small farm, grew up hunting with my dad and grandpa, and generally consider myself a pretty outdoorsy person. But that didn't stop me from doing a double take when I saw a raccoon looking up at me from my cat's dish in the corner of my living room a couple weeks ago

I've seen the animals from time to time in the woods, on the side of roads and crawling in and out of trash cans, but the encounter from eight feet away sent me reeling — more for something to throw at it than anything else.

Needless to say, the animal was undeterred by the broom handle I tossed at it, and after a couple moments of tense eye contact, a shout and a bunch of clapping sent him waddling out of my screen door, over the fence and into a neighboring parking lot.

It didn't take much to figure out how he came to be in my living room.

You see, our new five-month-old cat, Loaf, is not the quickest of learners. Despite all our efforts to train him to scratch at the door or meow to go outside and use the litterbox, he doesn't seem to get it. So, after a couple months, we compromised and propped open the screen door, which opens into our locked and fenced-in backyard. His dish stayed inside in the living room.

Until the raccoon, our only problem had been an excess of flies and bugs.

So we figure the raccoon forced the back door open from kitten size to small dog size in order to get to the cat food and other kitty treats. And we later found evidence of it wandering even further into the house, which was very unnerving.

In the end, it was an easy fix: Close and lock the door - much to the dismay of Loaf the cat.

However, despite the newly secured living room, I'm still wary and occasionally get up to take a peek whenever I wake up to loud crunching and nails scratching across the floor.