Backyard Wildlife

We've got possums. My husband puts cat food out for the older cats. Last winter they both stayed in the house most of the time and I really wanted to keep feeding them inside but come Spring, he started feeding them outside. Our oldest cat is real skiddish and she had gotten over some of that, so my theory was if we kept her coming in to eat, she wouldn't act so nervous all of the time. But he started feeding her outside and now she won't come back in or let me pet her. We had noticed that we were going through cat food twice as fast, and I imagined that we were feeding ever wild cat in the neighborhood. But the last couple of weeks, since it started getting dark so much earlier, we've walked out and found one or two possums getting their fill. I don't really mind the possums--they fit in nicely with the bats, rabbits and raccoons. But I really don't want to feed 'em!