Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce...

Oh good grief, I really shouldn't be giving the raccoon a name at all. He's a wild animal. And he's going to stay a wild animal. And I really shouldn't humanize him with a human thing like giving him a name. I learned that in a wildlife rehab class. It keeps you on track with your rehab mission but I did find out later that the people working at the wildlife center secretly did give names to the animals in rehab. Ha ha ha. 

I remember at the orientation meeting, all of us had to tell something about ourselves and what we appreciated about nature. Lots of nice thoughts, mine followed someone who liked to look at cardinals against white snow. Pretty image. But when it was my turn to talk, I said I liked to get a pizza and set it out on the deck and watch the birds have a big party (not my birds indoors, the wild ones outdoors). All birds love Italian food, wild or captive. I don't know how many nature rules I broke with that statement but I remember getting a look and...well, it wouldn't have worked out anyway. Ha ha ha. But giving an animal a name is an important thing because that brings them a lot into your world and hopefully a little out of theirs. 

I like to name my pets after people I know (friends, family, co-workers). So what name would I come up with this time....? There were lots of good ones for whatever reasons  but the one I'm going to try out and hopefully settle on (the raccoon hasn't come by tonight, otherwise I'd test it out) is a name of someone who retired from the company I work for several years ago. He was a darling man who was always in search of cake. He ......loved ........cake. I remember one day he was feeling very sad because there was no cake to be found and that was just so darn pitiful, I went out at lunch and bought him a cake, not a piece, one whole cake. It was so funny. It made him sooo happy. That man loved his cake. He would light up just talking about cake! So I'm going to try out his name on the raccoon. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Freddie K, who would be a cake seeker too if he knew what cake was.

This picture was taken last night right after he unrolled himself from being a tight little cat-sized ball of fur. Those are his  back feet in the front. He really did make himself kitty-size.