SUGAR AND HER SANTA TOY

Sugar loves her Santa toy- to beat up on. She gives this poor stuffed toy all of the biting and kicking and throwing around that we won't allow her to try to do to us. I know she looks so sweet in these pictures, but when she's on a rampage, stand back!

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Update on Jan 10:

We had an awful scare last week. Sugar disappeared for two days. I saw her last early on a Sunday morning (2:30 AM) when I fed the cats. I couldn't find her all day Sunday or Monday. I printed her above picture, thinking to put out some "Lost Cat" signs, but I was crying pretty hard because at our house a lost cat is usually a coyote casualty.

At 6 PM on Monday, a phone call from Sugar's microchip company told us that she had been found and gave us the number to call. She had somehow ended up in the tract behind our house. (I think she was following one of the roaming cats who visit our cat food bowl.) It was a really cold night and Sugar had climbed a palm tree and gotten on a 2nd floor balcony and mewed at a bedroom window for help. The teen-age girl whose bedroom window it was had asked for a kitten for Christmas and yelled to her mother, "God sent me a kitten!". The mother convinced the girl that they had to post "Found" signs and check at a vet to see if there was a microchip before they could keep her. The girl was so disappointed, but bravely gave her back to me. I told her she could have Sugar over to visit, but she probably doesn't want to get any more attached than she already is. I hope she gets her own kitten now.

OPIE A BIG GUY NOW

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Opie the Opossum is the same size as the big cats now. His body is the same, but his little legs are much shorter. In the first picture, he is headed for his yogurt. He already ate his grapes. In the second picture, he has finished his yogurt and is eating dry cat food. (He always holds on to his dish when he eats.)

I don't know if he ever hunts for other food. I read that "possums usually live only a couple of years. That could be because they have a hard life finding food.