Opossums get a bad rap. This is mostly due to the fact that they have beady eyes and long naked tails and pointy faces filled with pointy teeth that they use to eat souls with. Okay, mostly kidding about that last part. The fellow you see up there in the above photo is working to dispel common misconceptions such as these however, and he’s doing it in a jaunty red Santa suit! Gary — or, “Gary the Trash Cat” as he goes by on Instagram — was found as a tiny hairless orphan in West Philadelphia (pretty sure the unofficial opossum capital of the world) when he was just a couple weeks old by owner Katy DiSanto.
Now three months old, Gary is fully domesticated and lives in a house with two cats and a dog. After picking up a decent following online, DiSanto had the brilliant idea to give him his own line of holiday cards, as she wrote last week in a Facebook post.
DiSanto, who acquired a special permit from the Department of Fish and Wildlife to keep Gary as a pet, told Philadelphia’s NBC 10: “The stereotype of [Opossums] is that they’re full of rabies, but I’m finding that the opposite is true; they are considered nature’s sanitation workers. They eat garbage, as well as the insects and other vermin that are attracted to refuse. You get to learn a lot about these animals as you raise them.”
Unfortunately it’s too late to order your Gary the Trashcat cards for this Christmas, but you can visit his online store for other non-holiday related greeting cards — proceeds of which go to the Schuylkill Wildlife Rescue. Who wouldn’t want to see that face popping up in their mailbox! In the meantime check out some more pictures of Gary’s handsome mug below.
(Via NBC 10 Philadelphia)
