The Great Mouse Butt Mystery

Every family has that one member with an unhealthy obsession. Ours is a twenty-pound cat named Baby.

Baby is addicted to our garage. Not because she likes garages. Not because she enjoys the ambiance. No. Because the garage contains mice.

From the moment she wakes up, she's thinking about that garage. She parks herself in front of the door and waits. The second Justin or I wander anywhere in the general direction, the performance begins. She doesn't meow. She carries on like she's in heat and Garfield just called to say he's waiting for her in the garage.

Once Baby decides it's garage time, she's like a gnat on a sugar rush. There is no reasoning with her. There is no distracting her. There is only surrender.

Eventually we give in and let her out. Instant silence. Mission accepted.

Of course, eventually we'd like to go to bed. That's where things get complicated.

If you've never tried catching a cat who's convinced she's in the middle of the greatest mouse hunt of her life, allow me to save you the experience. It's less like catching a house cat and more like trying to arrest a tiny furry ninja.

It's basically a Special Ops mission. One of us blocks an escape route. The other circles around. Baby somehow appears behind both of us. We regroup. Try again.

Eventually—through luck, persistence, and what I'm convinced is divine intervention—we catch her. She's carried back into the house glaring over our shoulder toward the garage the entire way.

Then comes the lecture. Not from us. From Baby.

She follows us around the house yelling at us in a language I'm convinced consists entirely of insults. If I'd ever talked back to my mother the way Baby talks back to me, I'd have landed somewhere in the following week.

On particularly exhausting nights, I've even caught myself saying the exact same thing my mother used to say to me: "I brought you into this world... and I'll take you out."

Baby, of course, is completely unimpressed. She simply yells louder.

Now, before anyone starts feeling sorry for the mice... I already did.

For the longest time, if Baby caught one but hadn't finished the job, I'd scoop it up and carry it into the woods to give it another chance.

Then the mice declared war on Christmas.

They got into several storage containers holding my Byers' Choice Christmas Caroler collection. I've spent years collecting those. Thousands of dollars. They chewed them. They peed on them. They pooped on them. About a dozen pieces were damaged.

That was the exact moment my mouse rescue program officially came to an end.

I still refused to use poison because I don't want any of our animals getting into it, and I certainly don't want to poison the hawks, owls, snakes, foxes, and other predators that live on our property. I won't use glue traps because I think they're cruel. I won't use snap traps either.

So I looked at Baby and gave her the only instruction she needed.

"Have at them."

Baby enthusiastically accepted the promotion.

Before long, I started finding dead mice in the garage. Except... something wasn't right.

They weren't just dead. They were ripped cleanly in half. Not chewed. Not bitten. Ripped. And the only part that was ever there was the front half. The head. The front legs. Everything from about the middle forward.

The back half was simply... gone.

At first, I figured Baby had been playing with them. Surely I'd eventually find the other half somewhere in the garage. I looked. Nothing. Every single time, just the front half.

It was honestly disturbing.

On occasion other cats joined Baby in the garage. At one point, I convinced myself several of the cats must have been playing some kind of tug-of-war with the mice. It was the only explanation I could come up with for why they all looked ripped in half instead of bitten.

Except weeks went by when Baby was the only cat going into the garage. I kept finding the exact same thing. So much for that.

Weeks turned into months. Every now and then I'd find another one. Same thing. Front half. No backside.

Every time I found a partial mouse, I'd pick one up, toss it into the woods, and think, "That's really strange."

In hindsight, I probably confused every scavenger in the woods. Some raccoon was probably wandering around the woods with another mouse front in his paws, wondering what kind of lunatic kept leaving him only half a mouse.

Eventually, he had to be thinking...

"Seriously... where are the butts?"

Eventually, I started wondering if Baby wasn't just killing them... maybe she was actually eating the missing half.

It sounded ridiculous. Who eats only the backside of a mouse?

Every so often I'd mention it to Justin.

"I think she's eating the mouse butts."

Nothing. No response. I'm pretty sure he assumed I'd finally lost my mind.

Then one night I walked into the garage and stopped.

Four mice. Four identical crime scenes. Every single one ripped cleanly in half. Every single one missing exactly the same part.

I just stood there staring at them. That was it. The evidence was overwhelming.

Then I walked into the house, looked at Justin and said, "She's definitely eating butts."

That was not a sentence I ever expected to say out loud.

He looked back at me.

"No way."

"Way."

A few days later, Baby settled the argument.

She walked over to where Justin was standing. Without warning...

BLAAARRRFFF!

Out flew a freshly eaten mouse butt.

It landed directly on his bare foot.

Justin froze. Slowly looked down. We both stared at it for a full second.

He grabbed it by the tail expecting to pick it up. Except it came with... resistance.

It was glued to his foot with cat spit, slime, and goodness only knows what else. When it didn't come off right away, he immediately started panicking.

Eventually he managed to peel it off, ran to the deck, and launched it into the backyard like he was trying out for the Olympics.

We both stood there watching it land in the grass.

I finally broke the silence.

"Well... we'll be seeing that butt again."

Justin looked at me.

"What?"

"One of the dogs is going to find it, eat it, and throw it back up."

He stared at me for about two seconds before yelling,

"OH, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!"