LSLGuy
October 19, 2026, 1:43pm
21
Interesting. I’d assumed the Australian name “possum” was just a colloquialism for “opossum” as it is in US English. Not so. Thanks for my TIL du jour .
And it’s not even 10am here. I might even get a second TIL before bedtime.
Wow, they really do that, huh? We didn’t see many possums growing up in Philly.
And by “many,” I mean “any.”
Absolutely they do. I’ve seen it happen three times. Twice when scared by cats, once scared by me.
In my (extensive) experience, cats are indifferent to possums. A strange cat or one who has been “voted off the island” shows up? There’s likely to be a fight happening. A possum of any size shows up? It gets a glance, then gets ignored.
I have inside/outside cats–and possums always manage to come in with them, more times than I care to count. When I catch one (by the tail–they are slow-moving and not very bright) I would occasionally try to annoy them into “playing possum”, but they never did …
