Grizabella like a crooked pin." The character of Grizabella featured in an unpublished poem that T. S. Eliot wrote for his godchildren, intending to include it in "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats". However, as his widow, Valerie Eliot pointed out, he thought it was too "sad for children" and so did not include it in the finished work. Valerie Eliot came to the 1980 Sydmonton Festival concert where Andrew Lloyd Webber premiered some of his settings of the Old Possum poems, and gave him the paper with the fragment of Grizabella written on it. From there Lloyd Webber and director
Leadbeater's possum Leadbeater’s possum involving protection of remaining old-growth stands, and maintenance of younger stands that are allowed to attain hollow-bearing age. The combination of 40-year-old regrowth (for food) and large dead trees left still standing after the fires (for shelter and nesting) allowed the Leadbeater's possum population to expand to an estimated peak of about 7500 in the early 1980s. From its peak in the 1980s, the Leadbeater's possum population was expected to further decline rapidly, by as much as 90%, due to a habitat bottleneck. The population has dropped sharply since 1996. Particularly, the February 2009 Black Saturday bushfires destroyed