Realizing the glory of the rare manual transmission sold in only 1,400(ish) 1993 and 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokees, a cat climbed onto that gearbox earlier this summer and slithered into my Jeep through the shifter hole in the floor. Then it gave birth to four button-cute kittens, which were playing in the back of my Jeep just before I left for Germany two weeks ago. Now I’m back and three cats are gone! One remains in there along with an ugly-tailed monster!
Flying to Germany two weeks ago and leaving LA for a bit resulted in a lot of missed opportunities; I lost out on a chance to buy a great Ultravan RV (the seller bailed on me just before I left, then sold it while I was gone — womp womp), and three of the four kittens in my Jeep flew the coop! It’s okay, as that’s just nature’s way, and the kittens were getting big and energetic; it was only a matter of time. Look at these rascals just prior to my departure!:
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I spent fewer than two weeks in Germany, and the situation turned into a thorough shitshow:
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A possum!
The weird thing was that, upon arriving at the scene, I observed the mother cat, whom I’ve named Zee, sitting about a foot away from the possum, just watching it eat. There was no meowing or hissing — everyone seemed to be getting along great.
As I approached the Jeep, Zee hopped out, but the possum continued chowing down. The thing seemed total indifferent towards me; I knocked on my Jeep window hard, but the marsupial just sat there in the cargo area of my Holy Grail and ate catfood. Not a care in the world!
Eventually the possum scurried into the pile of spare parts that I’d shoehorned into the Jeep prior to towing it from my old house in Michigan to my current location near LA. This caused a minor issue: The kitten was also buried in that pile of parts! The photo above shows the kitten in the back of the Jeep the night prior.
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Upon seeing the possum, the kitten darted to the window sill on the driver’s side and prepared to take a leap of faith.
Having never left the Jeep, the kitten hesitated and — just before jumping to the ground — it changed its course and climbed onto the driver’s side mirror, and then onto the hood. Then it saw me, a much larger, two-legged monster:
As I approached, the kitten quickly climbed onto the passenger’s side mirror and decided to take its chances with the possum versus having to hang out with a balding car-nut. Can’t say I blame it.
I saw the possum’s tail on the passenger’s side floorboard, though I then quickly turned away and before I knew it, it was scurrying out of the Jeep and towards the storage areas on the outer edges of the parking lot.
The kitten I later saw sitting on the dashboard. I went back the following night and, well…
There’s more Catopian content to come. I’m still trying to capture the other three to give this little kitty a friend and because I want them all immunized and fixed to keep that colony in check, but that’s for another day. My friend got bitten by this little kitten, whom we’ve named Jaws and who is actually quite pleasant when not cornered in a messy Jeep, so we have to handle that. And we have to get Jaws socialized a bit more, as it’s currently a certified Scaredy-Cat, but again: More on this later.
I’d expect nothing less from David “The Situation Has Gotten Out Of Hand” Tracy.
In your best David Attenborough voice:
You spent way too much mental energy on this one.
I found it appropriate.
Just like you sporting one snowboarding glove in LA for some reason:) hahaha
Glove is highly logical. Kittens have very sharp little claws & teeth
Possums suffer from Fleshy Tail Syndrome. Animals with bushy tails are all cute and cuddly but any animal comes along with a fleshy tail and it’s suddenly disgusting. Look at the squirrel for instance, essentially just a tree rat, but it has a big bushy tail so it’s cute.
That said, you need to quit leaving catfood in you vehicles.
All fair.
Opossums are fighting on the front lines of the war against Lyme disease too – we should be celebrating the evil-looking little weirdos for their services to humanity, cute or not!
Those things are so damn creepy. Yuck!
I used to think the same, not anymore. They won me over. Give them a chance and they’ll win you over too.
That top image is just straight Liartown USA
My sister has cats. Sigh. The neighbors cat used to hang out on her front porch so of course she would feed it. One day she looked out to see the cat and an opossum sharing the cat food. Eventually the opossum would turn up every night around 8:00 and peer in the window, waiting for food. It got to where the critter would hang out on the hand rail and nap whenever she sat on the porch. This lasted a few months and then it moved on, hopefully. They’e scary looking but quite docile. Opossums, not sisters.
LOL
I keep waiting for the article titled “Spirit Halloween thought my Jeep was abandoned and turned it into a pop up store!” with a big “Spirit Halloween” banner hanging across the back window.
Jeez, DT! I know you are clean and (almost always) sober, but you live your life like someone perpetually two months out of inpatient rehab. You are an absolute maniac and it’s hilarious!
You are right about that. Sort of half expecting to see DT as a defendant on The Peoples Court one day. Charges to include Running an unlicensed animal homeless shelter, and Operating an unlicensed junkyard.
Aww
Get rid of the possum ASAP (humanely) because unlike adult cats, they will pee and poop all over its new domicile and you will *not* be able to get the smell out.
Dude that ship sailed months ago.
This is an opossum, not a possum. There are no possums in North America.
This is a pet peeve of mine because growing up in Australia my mum called me “Possum” as a pet name for me as a kid, hopefully because Aussie possums are cute and so was I back then. So I resent when people call these ugly things possums.
Thank you. I got smarter today.
Your complaint has been read and considered. But this is America son, and we do shit differently.
Most southern folks consider it pretentious to spell it with the “o” at the front. We spell it like it sounds here. POSSUM. Just like God intended.
As Jed would say, “that’s some good eaten’ there Jethro.”
You could compromise on ‘possum. Of course extraneous punctuation will get you shot in LA (Lower Alabama).
There is no compromise to be considered. We learnt good after you yankee bastards screwed us over the first time. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, won’t get fooled agin.
Now go away before we taunt you a second time…
Anyway:
“… just like Opossums, Possums will pee and poop all over its new domicile and you will *not* be able to get the smell out.”
To be fair… opossums are very cute when they’re young.
The kitten were cute, but I generally hate cats so personally find the opossum cuter…
Yes they are!
I hear the American possums are quite tasty
According to Merriam-Webster:
Both possum and opossum correctly refer to the Virginia opossum frequently seen in North America. In common use, possum is the usual term; in technical or scientific contexts opossum is preferred.
Also of note, the Australian possum was named so because of it’s resemblance to the Virginia opossum. And both terms “possum” and “opossum” were used for the Virginia opossum dating back to the early 1600’s.
tl;dr Yankees came up with the names opossum/possum and Aussies tried to steal and whitewash it’s history.
That tracks, we are criminals after all.
As opposed to Americans who committed high treason.
I mean, go big or go home.
It ain’t high treason if you get away with it.
Just sayin’….
Hey,we didnt steal nothin.And dont let that long list of former kiwi movie stars or bulgarian weightlifters tell you otherwise
Possum is colloquial. That’s what I call ’em, but I understand your point.
“God sends Opussum to warn local man against Jeep ownership. Local man continues to disregard God’s will for “Holy Grail” Jeep. More @ 11”
And on the fourth day God created the opossum and feline and gave them dominion over the rot of the seats and the rust of the frame. And it was good.
Better get that overlander project finished before it’s declared an official wildlife refuge or protected habitat.
It’s california, we’re probably too late for that.
OOF.Hilarious
Why drive into the wilderness when you can just collect it in your car?
Hate to break it to you, but the situation was out of hand the second wild animals moved into your freaking car!
Back it up a tiny bit and I think we crossed the threshhold at “new boss’s want my junk car out of the parking lot.”
First time I saw a possum (which is how I choose to spell it) I was alone, walking down a quiet suburban street in Pasadena and saw this THING walking right down the middle of the sidewalk TOWARDS me, without an apparent care in the world (not about me, anyway). This was my first time you see, and though some part of me knew what it was, it still sort of looked like a huge, mutated, partially hairless (and probably sentient) rat.
Of course and out of an abundance of prudence, I crossed the street to walk on the other side, just as if it were a bunch of rowdy street toughs and I was a dowdy matron or something. And this was years ago, when I was still limber enough to run if necessary.
David, your video clip about this is delightful. If you’re not already doing so, perhaps consider putting it on Youtube after you agree to whatever terms they insist on to monetize the video. I can’t help but think the clip would earn you enough $ over a year or two to pay for as set of i3 tires at the very least. 😉
It’s not a spelling choice, possums and opossums are two different things. You saw an opossum.
Learn something every day (almost). Thanks Scott. -Scott
Rowdy street toughs:
The Van Buren Boys?
-George Costanza
Opossums aren’t aggressive. When threatened, they display like they’re vicious (or they play dead), but they aren’t and they tend to get along well with most other animals, except, I suppose for a video I saw of an opossum encountering a skunk near a pond, pausing for a moment, then shoving the skunk into the water before running off. They eat a lot of pest creatures (particularly ticks) and are virtually immune to rabies due to a hostile body temperature.
No rabies, but they are a vector for equine encephalitis. Which is now treatable (if caught early), but not curable. we used to have a real challenge keeping them out of the hay barns at farms i worked on, before there was a viable treatment.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Equine_Protozoal_Myeloencephalitis_life_cycle.jpg
In my experience they are nasty f’ers. They raided my chicken coop (dumb me, not netted on top) and just started killing. Not like kill one and take it home for dinner. Killed every one. When I heard that 3 kittens are gone my first suspect was the opossum, though maybe not?
Finally, the answer to the age old question… “why did the chicken cross the road?”
To get away from the opossum. They never make it across.
I think if the opossum had gone after the kittens there would be evidence as such.
Strange the birds didn’t just fly away. Or attack.
There’s this video of an aggressive skunk getting body slammed by an Opossum:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gz837PJooEY&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.iflscience.com%2F&source_ve_path=MzY4NDIsMTM5MTE3LDA&feature=emb_rel_end
Yay Posso!
Apparently ZJ stands for Zoo Jeep.
J-Joyfully
E-Entertaining
E-Encounters with
P-Possums (and kittens)
I didn’t even know LA had possums LOL
I was always told to stay far away from them, as they carry a bunch of diseases
Also what does the note on the back wiper say ?
Wait, I thought possums were the ones who did NOT carry diseases. I know they’re immune to rabies and a bunch of other diseases. They mostly hang out in garbage that no one wants and eat rotten food that would otherwise go to waste, so … living with DT seems weirdly appropriate.
Hanging out in garbage no one wants is accurate. I have had at least 3 possum in my car experiences in junk I’ve owned.
From what I read, Opossums carry diseases such as leptospirosis, tuberculosis, relapsing fever, tularemia, spotted fever, toxoplasmosis, coccidiosis, trichomoniasis, and Chagas disease. They may also be infested with fleas, ticks, mites, and lice. Opossums are hosts for cat and dog fleas, especially in urban environments. This flea infestation on opossums is particularly concerning for transmission of flea-borne typhus, which is increasing in prevalence in Orange and Los Angeles Counties.
As opposed to feral cats which can carry rabies,
toxoplasmosis, cutaneous larval migrans because of various nematode parasites, plague, tularemia and murine typhus.
Easiest way to fix that is to dust the inside of the Jeep with FGDE and Borax. Both are highly effective at eliminating fleas as well as ants, roaches and other bugs.
If the cats can be dusted with the FGDE (NOT the Borax) so much the better. Bonus points for trapping the opossum and dusting it too but that is really above and beyond. Just feeding it a bit of FGDE should at least purge it of internal parasites.
Do they eat shower spaghetti?
It doesn’t. Opossums, yes.
Unless he brought one back from Australia somehow.
Thank you, opossum it is. CA most definitely has them, my wife saw one on our patio one night, decided to put out a little food for it (she helps all creatures, even me), and next thing you know we had the whole family coming by. Asked her to stop when the raccoons starting claiming the entire meal.
It’s all fun and games until the snakes show up.
Opossums eat snakes, including vipers.
Tune in next week when a full sized adult bear is discovered in David’s holy Grail. Lolz will ensue when he has to adopt that too.
If a squatter human settles in, he might as well sign over the title in CA.
Actually he would be legally responsible for providing mobile shelter, food service, and healthcare for as long as squatter and his immediate friends, family, and drug dealer wished to remain.
I smell a sitcom!
Oh God and the annoying opening theme song pretty much writes itself. “DT and the bear. DT and the bear. DT and the bear bear bear bear bear. *Whistle* “
My bear has the DTs
Jaws, huh?
You’re gonna need a bigger Jeep.
Or look for the Bond villain who’s employed this adorable bitey kitten
This is COTD material.
I think he still has the Golden Eagle. We’re probably fine.
Well, now you need to adopt some kittens and a possum. It’s the only reasonable course of action.
That Jeep needs to get sealed up, yesterday. There’s no telling what kind of varmint will wind up in there next.
Also: I’m enjoying DT’s progression to Cat Dad.
I’m waiting for a whole ecosystem to develop in there. Plants, various animals, and a whole food chain. California has the occasional cougar, so we can even get an apex predator to take up residence if we really nourish this ecosystem.
I heard there’s a Dollar General opening in the right front headlight assembly, and a Mattress Warehouse in the cowl.
at this point its safe to close up the jeep or.. you know actually work on putting it back together. All the soft parts of the interior are going to need to go. Cat urine is no joke the hardest thing to get rid of, rip and replace is really your only play.
Best of luck!
The carpet and seats were gonna get ripped out anyway. It doesn’t have a headliner.
The only fabric that will remain is the small cuts of fabric built into the door panels.
But yeah, time to seal ‘er up!
“Cat urine is no joke the hardest thing to get rid of, rip and replace is really your only play.”
Not true. A wet dry vac and bacterial based enzyme cleaner can do the job.
Source: My decades of cat ownership and fostering.