Possum or cat? Good Samaritan’s humane act backfires

When one Kiwi woman saw a cat lying dead by the side of the road she immediately wanted to help the poor pet’s owners to find closure.

She took the animal to a nearby vet clinic, in the hope that they might identify it by microchip.

Later, she checked in to see if her good deed had resulted in identifying the poor pussycat.

“Hi there,” the email began.

“Yesterday I brought a deceased cat that I found on the road into your clinic to be microchip checked.

“I was just wondering if you had any luck locating a chip or the owner? Thank you for your help.”

The vets had an answer for her - but it wasn’t the one she expected.

“Thank you so much for caring and bringing the animal into us,” they began gently.

They then revealed that a close inspection of the deceased had given another clue to its identity.

“When we tried to scan the pet, our nurses realised that it was in fact a possum.

“It was very hard to tell due to the severe face trauma.”

The possum's face had suffered severe trauma. Photo / NZME

The vet then said the “only indication was the feet compared to cat’s paws”.

The kind-hearted woman shared a screenshot of the email with a colleague and it made its way online.

The Herald contacted the colleague who said that her workmate was too embarrassed about the incident to comment.

Some online commenters said that they had made a similar mistake in the past, stopping to move a dead cat from the road only to find it was a pest marsupial.

Mistaking a possum for a cat is far from the wildest misidentification that has been made on the introduced critters.

In 2021, an East Auckland woman took to social media to ask her neighbours about the strange creature she encountered in her backyard.

“I just saw a cat-like animal,” she wrote.

“It comes up with a size of cat, but with a piggy nose and a monkey body. Anyone can point out name of this animal?”

Terrifying. Photo / Facebook

East Aucklanders who knew the animal by sight were quick to offer their advice to their confused neighbour.

“The infamous Monkey Cat of East Auckland I believe,” one man wrote.

“Chupacabra,” wrote another, misidentifying the animal as a far less terrifying mythical animal from the Americas that sucks the blood from livestock.

“It’s a Drop Cat,” another said. “A close cousin of Aussie’s Drop Bears.”

Others suggested it was an armadillo that had shed its armour or “striped hyena” and suggested it could be caught using fresh chicken meat as bait.

Many more correctly identified the Monkey Cat, calling it by its more popular name of “possum”.

“Bro it’s a Possum, welcome to NZ,” one man wrote.