Sneaky Possum Tries To Convince Woman He's Just One Of Her Cats

Maura McLaughlin was asleep in her bed when she awoke to an unfamiliar feeling. Fur was rubbing against her fingers in the middle of the night, but it didn’t feel like one of her cats.

“My door was closed and I knew my cats were not inside the room,” McLaughlin, founder of the nonprofit Off The Wall Grafitti, told The Dodo. “So I was like, ‘What was that?’ And I just bolted upright and went into the living room to sleep on the couch.”

The next morning, McLaughlin learned she wasn’t the only one who had received a mysterious visitor. “One of the artists who’s living in my daughter’s room came in and said, ‘I had the cutest baby possum in my bedroom this morning,’” McLaughlin said. “‘I just scooped it up and put it outside and said, ‘hello.’"

McLaughlin couldn’t figure out how the possum got inside or why he decided to take a tour of the bedrooms. So she forgot about it until six months later when she was sitting in the living room of her home in Sherman Oaks, California, and the visitor returned. 

“I heard this new sound, and I was like, ‘That is not my cats, that’s not a raccoon, what is slurping at the water bowl?’” McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin slowly approached the sound, to find the possum eating her cats’ food. When McLaughlin tried to escort the animal outside, he made it clear that he didn’t want to leave.

McLaughlin decided that if the possum wanted to stay, he had a much right to her house as the rest of them. “What I ended up doing was giving up and giving in to the fact that they are here — they were born here under my house,” McLaughlin said. “These are just little community members.”

The possum seems to understand the rules of the house — so whenever he comes to snack on the cat food, he uses the litter box as well. McLaughlin's cats don’t seem to mind sharing their litter box with the possum, or take any notice of the strange animal at all.

It seems like the possum just wanted to be one of the cats — visiting at night to eat their food, drink their water, and use their litter box.

Now, when McLaughlin doesn’t see the possum for a few days she gets worried. After all, he’s just another member of their happy little community.