Peculiar Cat returns
Dec. 16th, 2019 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellThis morning, when I turned on the patio light and opened the back door to put food out for the feral cats, a possum popped out of hiding and dove under the house. This explains why outdoor kibble consumption has been up lately, and probably why dirt is getting tracked into the water bowls.
This is a situation we've seen before. A few years ago, we saw one possum so regularly in the evenings that we dubbed it Peculiar Cat. It had no problem being out at the same time as the feral cats, and they would politely wait their turn while it finished eating. I guess, on the premise that it was furry, four-legged, eating the same food as them, and too big to be prey (the typical possum around here is slightly larger than a typical housecat), they assumed it was just a weird-looking cat. A little Web searching at the time suggested that this is far from the first feral colony to have a possum hanging out with it.
Anyway, I don't begrudge it the food. It's probably helping keep the garden pests down (fun fact: possums can even eat poisonous snakes, being immune to pit viper venom), and it won't be around for long. Reliable sources say they don't often live longer than a couple years.
This is a situation we've seen before. A few years ago, we saw one possum so regularly in the evenings that we dubbed it Peculiar Cat. It had no problem being out at the same time as the feral cats, and they would politely wait their turn while it finished eating. I guess, on the premise that it was furry, four-legged, eating the same food as them, and too big to be prey (the typical possum around here is slightly larger than a typical housecat), they assumed it was just a weird-looking cat. A little Web searching at the time suggested that this is far from the first feral colony to have a possum hanging out with it.
Anyway, I don't begrudge it the food. It's probably helping keep the garden pests down (fun fact: possums can even eat poisonous snakes, being immune to pit viper venom), and it won't be around for long. Reliable sources say they don't often live longer than a couple years.
