“Get
away! Leave my cats alone!” I screamed. The possum scrambled
over the side of the porch.
The
possum facing my half-grown cat had looked four or five times the
cat’s size. In 1993 I was not accustomed to possums; locally,
they’d been hunted almost to extinction in the days when
everyone kept free-range chickens. I associated them with the Deep
South and thought they were unbearably ugly.
But
my cat looked blandly at me as if to ask, “What’s the
matter with you?” She had caught a mouse and arranged a tidy
little pile of inside parts on the porch.
“Not
on the porch, please,” I said, fetching a broom to sweep them
over the side.
My
cat took note. After that the killed mice, and parts of mice, were
always left on the ground. She continued, though, to use food treats
to train the possum.
During
the next few weeks the cat showed me that she was not intimidated by
the possum’s size. She usually made friends of other animals,
and she regarded the possum as a pet. It came and went on cues from
her, disposed of the mice the cat was always catching and killing,
and left the kitten, the cardinals, and the house snake alone.
The
snake and the cardinals’ ancestors had lived at the house
before I did, long before it became a Cat Sanctuary. The snake
avoided humans. (Mother later confessed that he’d always “given
her the willies” but, knowing that he killed any venomous snake
in the neighborhood and ate a few rodents as well, she’d always
tried to act as if she appreciated his residence in the attic. Most
years, all we saw of him was a snakeskin, longer each year, somewhere
around the attic door. The cardinals weren’t really pets, but
they lived in the hedge and ate insects in springtime.
In
fact the house was not yet a Cat Sanctuary. It became one only when
it was dedicated to the memory of the brave little cat who made pets
of possums. That’s another story. My parents never kept a cat.
The orchard near the house attracted all kinds of mice, rats, and
squirrels. That was why the cat, who got a measure of kibble twice a
day and occasional table scraps, caught so many mice and used them to
impress other animals.
First
Possum was toward the large end of the size range for Didelphis
virginianus, presumably male. The species has a wide size
range,
and males don’t necessarily grow bigger than their mates, but
the biggest males can weigh close to 15 pounds while the biggest
females weigh less than 10 pounds. Many adult possums are smaller
than an adult cat.
The
name “possum” or “opossum” comes from an
Algonquian word said to mean “a white animal.” Most
possums’ coats are a drab pale gray color. Some individuals are
dark gray, black, or even ginger, and I’ve seen one with
patches of black, whitish, and ginger fur.
Speaking
of possum fur, the animals’ habits are not likely to make
anyone want to handle their fur or them, but when spinning wool was
introduced to Cherokee country from Britain, some Cherokees tried
keeping possums in cages, forcing cleaner lives on the animals, and
then spinning their fur with wool to make a softer, lighter thread.
The inner coat is said to be very soft and fluffy.
First
Possum was soon joined by a smaller possum I called Pogo, though it
was probably the female. Possums are normally strictly solitary but
the cat seemed to summon those two at the same time. They didn’t
“act like a couple” in human terms. Possums are not known
for pair bonding. They are genuinely asocial, rather than being
mostly solitary, territory-respecting hunters like cats. First Possum
and Pogo were friendlier than most possums, in public; I’d see
them enter the yard from different directions and find food treats
left within a few yards of each other.
I
looked up these and other facts about possums at the library. Adult
cats and possums usually respect each other and leave each other
alone, I learned. If cornered a possum may bite, and its fifty teeth
can do some damage. If not cornered, possums are almost never
aggressive. They are a composter species, built to eat dung and
carrion. They survive exposure to all the disease germs this diet
contains by having a peculiar metabolism; they are warm-blooded, but
not so warm as other warm-blooded animals, and disease germs that
infect other animals don’t last long if they try to infest
possums. (Disease germs do, however, cling to possums, so you
wouldn’t want to touch one.) Except for one rare protozoan
infection that can spread from possums to horses, possums actually
spread almost no diseases—provided that other creatures leave a
good healthy distance between possums and themselves.
Possums
are slower than most of the prey animals they eat when they do manage
to catch one, smaller and weaker than most of the other animals that
might consider eating them. Looking ugly and smelling nasty are their
main defense. Many other animals could kill possums but, since most
animals kill only what they eat, relatively few possums are killed by
other animals.
Learning
these facts made me feel more comfortable with the fact that my cat
was unmistakably making pets of these possums. Humans are not the
only living things that form cross-species bonds. Dogs and horses are
more likely to have pets of their own than cats are, but I happened
to have adopted an unusually social cat. Her predatory instincts made
her enjoy hunting. She seldom ate much, if any, of her prey. She
found that the possums were willing to dispose of mice for her, and
she chose to supply them with mice. My parents had tried to control
mice with traps and poison baits, and failed, for years. I was
grateful for anything that thinned the rodent population.
My
cat also adopted kittens. She’d adopted one “baby sister”
even before the night she spent in veterinary surgery. At the clinic,
the vet said, she’d shown an interest in some orphan kittens
the vet had reared to an adoptable age, so wouldn’t I like to
adopt them? Well, they were free of charge. And after the two big
ones had found permanent homes, there were more kittens.
The
second year, one of the kittens was mostly white with gray and orange
patches in her long thick hair. She did not answer to the name of
Calico, but answered to a general “kitty, kitty” call if
she was hungry. She was not social, or very easy to love. She liked
being petted but snarled and sulked if I petted other cats too. She
spent a lot of time sulking. In the autumn there was a noise under
the porch. Apparently Calico had objected to First Possum wintering
there, and First Possum slashed her hind leg with some of his fifty
teeth.
A
few nights later, in the gathering dusk, I thought I saw Calico
coming in late for dinner, moving slowly and stiffly as if the leg
hurt. “Come on, kitty, kitty,” I crooned. The pale fluffy
animal hesitated, then scrambled up onto the porch-- “Possum?”
Yes, it was First Possum, now an old arthritic animal, triumphantly
claiming the place of the disagreeable cat who had moved out for
good. People who didn’t want other cats admired Calico’s
coat, and since Calico behaved nicely enough when she had someone’s
admiration all to herself, I expect she lived happily ever after.
First Possum lived out his old age comfortably enough, holed up under
the porch in winter, answering to “kitty, kitty” and
getting a few kibbles at dinnertime. After the January freeze we saw
no more of him.
But
Pogo failed to look both ways before crossing the road, as possums
sometimes do, and was run over. The cat who’d made a pet of
Pogo recognized the body and seemed distraught that Pogo was past
curing. She had been overconfident about cars before Pogo was run
over; she developed a healthy fear of moving vehicles afterward.
After
First Possum and Pogo I thought the place was possum-free. I was
wrong. The next fall’s first frosts brought in a very
small black possum, with one long
white eyebrow
whisker. The cats trapped her in a cage I called “Cat Jail,”
where kittens were confined when they were in someone’s way; it
had a simple chip-on-a-nail latch the cats knew how to work. The
possum didn’t faint, nor did it hiss or whirl and jump in a
threat display. She looked up as if to say “You wouldn’t
hurt me, would you?”
Something
ticked over in my consciousness. I thought that possum was cute. I
wouldn’t hurt her. She got a few kibbles when the cats had
their meals, too. She grew a little bigger, but not much. And, next
summer, she let me see just a glimpse of her babies—something
like a small black mouse with white paws. He eventually grew almost
as big as First Possum.
For
a long time I only ever saw one possum approach the house in any
given season. The ones the cats trusted as friends were offered
names, though I never felt positive that they understood that they
had names, as distinct from learning that food might be available
when I raised my voice. In fact I only felt sure that one of them
answered to a distinct call rather than just approaching the house at
a certain time of night (possums are nocturnal and keep a regular
schedule, with variations depending on what’s edible from day
to day).
We
had a few possums the cats distrusted, for good and sufficient
reason. Some possums will kill and eat kittens. I was able to rehome
some possums. A few seemed to be untrustworthy because of illness or
ill-nature, or both, and had to be put down. Nevertheless, our
resident cats have been a social cat family, and the tradition of
cats treating possums as pets has continued. I’ve not told the
cats which individual possums they should and should not trust. I
take my cues from them.
So,
one year there was Pearl, a pearl-gray possum who came when the line
“Pearl, Pearl, Pearl” (as sung by Flatt & Scruggs)
was sung. Possums are not motivated to answer to calls in order to
amuse humans, although Pearl did. She had a small snout suitable for
getting cans of vegetables really clean, and I called her when I had
a can, or cans, for her to clean. I never told the recyclers whom to
thank.
For
three years there was Alfred, the biggest possum of all. From a
distance he could be mistaken for a terrier and once, when I walked
up the road late at night, he trotted at my heels like one, too.
Alfred was, as a joke, named after a human. The human Alfred didn’t
think the joke was very funny at first, but eventually endorsed the
name. If a possum had to be named after him, at least it was not only
a big one but a clever one, and a long-lived one, too!
Later
there was Pally, a small possum who really seemed to want to be a
cat. Pally used the cat door into a seldom-used room in the house,
and the cats didn’t mind. At least once Pally rubbed up against
my ankle, like a cat, reminding me it was time for dinner.
Prance
wasn’t much of a pet, but it did have long legs and a
three-colored coat, reminding me to tell The Nephews the old Cherokee
fable about the possum’s scaly tail. The possum, they say, was
once a much better looking animal, with long legs and a gorgeous
plumy tail. This made the possum vain, to the point it they lost all
the good manners animals instinctively have in fables. The other
animals’ discontent attracted, or resolved itself into, some
sort of uproar. What happened depends on who is telling the story.
When it was over the possum found itself hopping around on short
clumsy legs, shaking a short scaly tail, to cure its vanity.
Not
too many summers ago, we finally saw another pair of possums. They
seemed to live in separate dens and visit the house at different
times. Parva, the little one, came up through the yard around sunset,
and Dorsa, the big one, liked to check that all the cans in the
recycling were completely clean around three o’clock in the
morning. Dorsa had a dark dorsal stripe.
However,
summer fruit altered the possums’ routes, and one evening Dorsa
came out early and joined the cats at dinner. Were they safe, I
wondered. One of the cats noticed my concern and very deliberately,
as if to relieve my mind, walked over beside the big possum as he was
eating, stood up on her hind legs to reach over his shoulder, and
slapped him. Dorsa didn’t seem to mind at all. How did I know
that that cat wasn’t really jealous
about
food, that she was mindfully showing me that this much larger animal
was her pet? I could tell by her body language, of course, even
before Dorsa ignored the slap and the cat ignored Dorsa’s
continuing to eat kibble. I put out another serving. Dorsa did not
share the cats’ dinner again.
The
current resident possum has not shown itself to me yet, but it comes
out to inspect the recycling around midnight, and the cats like and
trust it. That’s all I need to know.
What
all the possums have had in common is that, apart from any treats of
uneaten mice, kibble, or traces of food stuck to the bottoms of cans,
they eat...a lot of things, actually. Possums are omnivores. They eat
mice when they can catch one. Some of them respect and appreciate
cats enough that they don’t bother kittens, but I never heard
of a possum that hesitated to eat any baby poultry it could catch;
they can and will reach up through chicken wire, so baby chickens’
boxes need to rest an inch or so above a solid base. They adore soft
sweet fruits and eat little else during cherry, peach, plum, or
persimmon season. And they clean out vermin like roaches, and if the
house snake ever let a venomous snake live long enough a possum might
eat that too. But let’s just say that there is a sand pit under
the porch, for the cats. Before the possums moved in, it needed to be
cleaned out by a human every few days. Since the possums have moved
in, it’s stayed clean.
Possums
aren’t very pretty, nor are they very smart, and they have no
instinct to cuddle or enjoy cuddling if anyone ever wanted to touch
them, which one wouldn’t. But they are very nice to have
around.
Priscilla
King’s reader-funded blog about books, her cats, life in
general, and the weekly winners of the Adorable Adoptable Pet Photo
contest, is at https://priscillaking.blogspot.com
