Maura McLaughlin was sound sleeping in her bed when she felt something strange. In the middle of the night, fur was rubbing against her fingertips, but it wasn’t one of her cats.
Off The Wall Grafitti founder McLaughlin told The Dodo, “My door was locked and I knew my cats were not in the room.” “I was curious as to what that was. I immediately stood up, walked into the living room, and fell asleep on the couch.
McLaughlin discovered the next morning that she wasn’t the only one who had gotten a strange 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.
The possum appeared to be visiting the cats at night to eat their food, drink their water, and use their litter box in an attempt to blend in with them.
Now, McLaughlin becomes concerned if she doesn’t see the possum for a few days. He is after all just another resident of their friendly little town.
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