the possum

a bedtime story

once upon a time there was a little black alley cat, who was everything a little black cat should be, sleek-coated & lithe & quick, except that by some disease or accident her tail was bald & scarred. because of her bald tail, no other cats would come near her & none of the people in her neighborhood would let her inside, and everyone called her the possum.

the possum was very lonely. some combination of her loneliness & maybe a little ptsd from her disease or accident, made her twitchy & yowly. she hated how sometimes the humans would try to grab her. she hated her bald scarred tail. & she hated being called the possum

but while she was chasing tomcats who ran away from her & trying to sneak into houses that slammed the door on her, there was someone out there who loved the possum……

a real opossum saw her &, pepé le pew style,¹ believed that she was another real opossum, just an especially beautiful & graceful & exotic one. he wouldn’t leave her alone

she looked down on him greatly for loving her, and for being a redneck who felt at home in the country when she was a sophisticated city girl, and for being a nightwalker who couldn’t stand the sun when she herself could walk under the sun or the moon, and for being such a trash eater (she was a bit of a trash eater herself which made it even more urgent she find someone who ate even more trash to look down on)

but one day she was disheartened from one too many tomcats running away from her, & one too many doorslams in her face, & that night when he came & asked her to come to the forest with him, she thought “why not? i’m not at home there but after all i’m not at home here either,” & she went

the forest was not at all what she expected. she had believed that the city was exciting & the forest was boring but she found that country folk know how to party too. all the forest creatures would get together & have monster truck rallies with rc trucks. there was a bullfrog playing a banjo & singing that three dog night song, except turned around so it was about being drinking buddies with humans even though he couldn’t understand a word they said. the stars & the moon were brighter out there. the real opossum was always by her side. sometimes she had to deal with dangers she had never encountered in the city—running from coyotes—but there were no other cats to reject her & no doors to slam in her face. without even noticing it she got less twitchy & less yowly

but she grew to miss the sunlight & the city….and she & the real opossum could not come to terms about childrearing, he wanted to do attachment parenting but she was more montessori. after all, when it came down to it, she wasn’t a possum. she was a cat who craved the company of other cats & people. so she decided it was time to make the journey back

during her time in the forest, she had seen things far scarier than humans, & she had come to understand that not everyone who approached her did so to threaten her, so that when a human came up to grab her again, she wasn’t quite scared enough to get away in time. the human snatched her up & brought her to another alien environment, the opposite of the forest—bright & clean & made of straight lines, full of needles that hurt her but then made all pain go away……to her it was like an alien abduction experience but really it was just a visit to the vet

of all the scary & strange things that had happened to the possum this was by far the scariest & strangest. but when she woke up, free of fleas for the first time, a little woozy but feeling better than ever, she hadn’t been dumped outside again. she was inside a house, being watched over by humans, & by another cat, with a fluffy tale…..

her tail stayed bald & scarred. & everyone kept calling her the possum. but she didn’t mind

the end

1. minus le pew’s french suavity