Page 9 - Animal Kin

got warm and the windows were open, Loudey started ex- ploring. She was used to being able to do pretty much what- ever she wanted in our house and she didn’t understand
that she couldn’t open our neighbor’s refrigerators or sleep in their beds. One night there was a knock on our front door in the middle of the night. A policeman was there and asked if we had lost our pet raccoon- a neighbor had found one in their house and they had heard that we had one. Loudey had walked out of an open window from our house, down the front porches and then into our neighbor’s bedroom! That poor woman must have been so surprised. My mom went and got her and the policeman suggested that we get her a collar and an ID tag and that we try to keep her in our house.
My mom thought that maybe she needed more time out- side so early in the mornings, before work and school, we started going to a nice tree-filled park to let Victoria and Loudey romp around. Most of the time Loudey followed Vic- toria round, running up and down the hills. One day, Loudey climbed a tree. When it was time to go she wouldn’t come down. We had to leave because of school but we came back later that day. She wasn’t in the tree and was nowhere to be seen. Victoria walked all around, sniffing the ground. But