How Curious 1/15/2023

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

My cat prefers faucet water.  I know that was quite an opening statement but it’s true. He’s been given bowls. He’d tolerate them but he didn’t seem to drink like he should.  His most favorite course of action if anyone is anywhere in the vicinity of a sink is to get up on the counter and stand in said sink. He looks at you expectantly. He wants to you to turn the tap to a light stream so he may drink from it.  Occasionally he will inexplicably paw at the water. I am not sure if this is to check its temperature or what the reasoning for this is.  Often, once his paw is wet, he then shakes it in disgust as if water causing wetness was unexpected. That bit I cannot begin to fathom but, as anyone who has ever had or known a cat should know, their thought processes are a bit of an enigma. 

Anyway, I read somewhere that cats prefer moving water to it being still in a container.  Well, I am nothing if not considerate. I will open the door for my handsome and furry little man to wallow on the back patio any number of times. Even the times that he doesn’t really want to come in and is just toying with me.  So, since I am such a paragon of pet parenthood, I decided I would get him his own little fountain. Now, before you go throwing me a parade, I did only agree to do this when I found they could be found for a reasonable price.  When I thought that they were hundreds of dollars the sweet fuzzy fellow was just going to have to cope with what he had.

So, we got him a fountain of his own. It has its own filters and whatnot to keep the water clean. This is good since my Jasper is a bit of a crummy individual as that he apparently loves to chew with such open-mouthed vigor that he leaves bits of his food all over the place so filters keeping his water from becoming a chunky stew is helpful. It’s a lovely little fountain really, it runs rather quietly with four little streams of perfectly flowing water. Well, there are the times when the water is running low when it begins to sputter and spurt which irritates him to no end and makes him give the fountain as well as myself very bitter looks.  While cats may not speak per se, they express disdain better than the best poet. 

Once he had a fountain, I felt certain that his days standing in the bathroom sink whilst I am trying to get ready, looking at me, the faucet handle, me, and the faucet handle were surely coming to an end.  It was almost going to be slightly sad that I could no more chuckle as I watched that his ears wiggle every time he swallows.  I was very much mistaken as to how things would turn out. The water is disappearing from his fountain, so he is drinking from it.  However, his obsession with drinking from faucets has not subsided in the least.  I cannot say what his obsession is. I don’t know if perhaps tap water has a better flavor than kitty fountain water.  Come to think of though, I do remember thinking as a child, that the water from the bathroom tap somehow tasted better than the tap in the kitchen.  Upon further consideration, I may still think this.  Perhaps my feline’s eccentricities might not be too outlandish in the grand scheme of things, at least for my home anyway.

Speaking of odd creatures, I have discovered a very specific spot in my daily commute where I’ve noted recurring possum activity.  And yes, I know that they are technically called opossums but the term sounds utterly ridiculous to me and I just cannot bring myself to call them that.  Nobody else that I know of calls them that and they are a very prevalent population in this area.  Hopefully, you’ll humor me and can grasp the furry little so-ugly-its-cute smiling creature to which I refer.  But as of late, I have noticed in one particular area of the road I keep seeing the little fellows doing various things and the specificity of the setting I find intriguing.

Now, it is at this point that I need to add a little information for those of you that are not familiar with the possum culture of the south. Bless their hearts, they have a rough go of things. While they are actually rather beneficial to the environment (they eat lots of the nastiest pests) they get a bad rap.  I don’t know if it’s the somewhat menacing nature of their toothy grins or their rat-like tails.  But other than their questionable reputations, the poor things seem to always want to cross the road and they are not good at the process in the slightest. If I had a nickel for every possum victim of vehicular homicide that I saw on the local roadways I would be a wealthy woman.  They must be a prolific bunch because after seeing so many deceased, that there are any left living is amazing.

Back to what I saw recently though. Both times I saw this scene, was after heavy rain and storms. The first time there I saw a drenched possum sitting, and I do mean very literally sitting in the far right of the right lane of the highway. He was moving every so slightly and I couldn’t shake the thought that he seemed to be thinking about something that confused him. When I traveled the same way later, he had sadly suffered the fate of the majority of his kind that come near the roadway.  Had he been hit before and just not ended?  Had he been sitting there with a concussion?  I felt a bit guilty that I didn’t stop to check on him until I considered that if I had it’s likely we would have just both been injured and that wouldn’t have helped either of us.  But then, just a few days later, after another heavy night of rain and storms, in the exact same spot, another toothy smile lying lifeless in the roadway.

What is the appeal to this spot?  Is it a major possum thoroughfare that the highway is impeding upon? Is it more twisted and this is some sort of place that the creatures choose to either test their road crossing skills or end themselves? And why in the world do I always see them here after rainy weather?  There are so many questions to which, due to my lack of abilities to speak the language or the possum and/or find one willing to converse with me, I will never know the answer.  I guess it falls in the same category as to why my cat is intoxicated with faucet drinking. Some things I will just have to ponder about. I will look very much like that first possum in doing so actually.  Odd little mysteries are all around.  Just don’t sit in the road to have a think about them.