Milk Maid

Playing ‘possum. It’s an expression that means to “play dead” to get out of things. It’s not to be confused with playing with opossums, which is something one of my cats found out the hard way recently.

A few days ago, it was nearly 10 p.m. and I was finishing up watering my rabbits for the night.

I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye and figured it was just one of the cats.

I turned to get more water and a creature, nearly the size of a cat, but ugly as sin, was looking up at me with their beady little eyes.

I let out a huge scream and the rather unpleasant looking creature didn’t even flinch.

It was an opossum and judging by the size and demeanor of the creature, I assumed it was a rebellious juvenile.

It was just chilling in the corner of my rabbit barn as if it was impatiently waiting for me to leave so it could dine on rabbit pellets and oats.

There was no immediate danger, so I quickly attempted to finish watering the rabbits when I heard a loud, “MEOWWWW!” “Skinny Cat”, who may be the saddest excuse for a cat around, jumped on the opossum and tried to attack it.

But, Skinny Cat made a terrible life choice. The opossum wasn’t having any of Skinny Cat’s nonsense and began to growl, hiss and scratch at her.

Meanwhile, my favorite part of the occasion was that all the rabbits stopped enjoying their midnight snack to observe and so did a couple of other cats.

Nobody offered to help Skinny Cat out. They probably felt it was like a dumpster fire and they just couldn’t look away.

At least I did. Skinny Cat eventually gave up, the opossum walked out of the barn and one farm crisis was adverted for the night.

If they weren’t so unfortunate looking, and near my rabbits, I wouldn’t have any problem with the opossum.

They are “nature’s custodians” eating ticks, rats, mice and other creepy crawlers.

Skinny Cat better watch out because that opossum could take her place on mice patrol.

Lesson learned, cats can’t play ‘possum.