Aloysius

Possum Magic Mom was ignoring him for the laptop again. She stared at the screen and made tapping sounds with her fingers while Aloysius tried to get her attention. The little table she sat crosslegged in front of was made of unfinished wood – delightful for lick-rubbing – so he threw his whole self into it, his eyes glazing over in ecstasy as he drew his face backwards against one short leg of the thing, plastering the fur on his jawline flat with saliva, and giving himself a really impressive pseudo-mohawk on top. She couldn’t really ignore him when the whole table rocked beneath his efforts, but she petted him absently, instead of dropping what she was doing to give him the intense full-focused attention he was accustomed to and craved. So Aloysius moved on to lick-rubbing his human’s shins, wetting down her pajamas. Surely she must notice that! He stood back and clicked at her. “Wow, that’s a lot of possum spit,” she commented, stroking him nose to tail several times before she continued typing. He lick-rubbed her foot in its fuzzy sock. She chuckled, and offered him some dried fruit, but quickly returned to her keyboard. He refused the treat. What made this nonliving plastic thing more important than him? The small opossum had had enough. He wanted real petting, not distracted half-measures and bribes of food. Resolutely he climbed right up into her lap, and sniffed at the front of her pajama top. Yes, he could tell she had held both female opossums in the last hour or so, but that wasn’t what he was after. Mom quit typing, and lightly encircled his uncoordinated body with her hands. Encouraged, Aloysius clicked, and rubbed his pink nose along her lips, tasting the chocolate she had been eating. (Sometimes she shared chocolate.) She scooted out away from the table, holding him upright against her chest with his bottom braced on her lap. Pulling off her glasses and dropping them to the blanket beside her, she brought her knees up and gently, carefully leaned the little possum backwards against her thighs, and buried her nose in the yellow-tinged fur of his chest, steadying him with her hands on his forearms. She inhaled slowly and deeply of the virile scent, holding her breath for a long moment before finally releasing it in a soft hum of pleasure. “You are magic, my little love,” she informed him, drawing another deep drag of the sharp, musky aroma. “Mmmmm.” Satisfied that he at last had her undivided attention, Aloysius gripped Mom’s ear in one fist, and gave the side of her head a quick rub. “Ow?” she said, but made no move to pry his fingers off. Instead she leaned down further and exhaled warm breath into the ultra-soft fur of his tummy. “I love you, Aloysius.” When he let go of her ear, she pulled back enough to gaze into his face. “I'm not really ignoring you,” she told him. “In fact, I'm writing about you, so I can remember every detail, for always.” The small opossum vigorously licked the hand holding his left arm, and clicked at her. When she offered him the dried cherry again, this time he took it, rearranged it in his mouth with his hand, then chewed with his eyes squinched shut in sheer pleasure.