Tilly likes fur mice. A lot. Especially the gray ones. As creepy as it was to see her fly into the bedroom with a real-looking mouse in her mouth, headed right for my lap, I indulged her.

Now, because Lola liked to eat the tails of Tilly's
mice (I have actually pulled them out of her mouth and throat) I began snipping off the tails before giving Tilly her toy.

One day I bought a multi-pack of mice and gave one to Tilly. I forgot to snip off the tail. Twenty minutes later, I saw her with the mouse at her feet. Because Lola was nearby with an unreadable expression on her face, I was worried, but relaxed when I saw that the tail was still intact. Until...

I leaned closer and saw that the mouse had no butt! Someone ate the butt right off, leaving the tail dangling.

I thought this was an anomaly, but then it happened with every mouse I gave Tilly from the multi-pack.

While I caught Lola in the act of eating the butt off a mouse, I suspect Tilly was into the action, too. Each time I'd catch them brutalizing the mice, I'd throw them away.

One night, I took two mice away from them and threw them in my bedroom trash. Lola and Tilly crawled over my head to dive headfirst into the trash, steal the mice, and eat their butts off.

After I photographed this mouse, I turned around to get Tilly and Lola's comment. What did they have to say?

"Oh, no, we didn't eat any mouse butts. We're just two little sweet kitty-cats. We don't know how that happened.

Maybe Mom chewed the mouse's butt right off. Yeah, that's the ticket. Mom did it!"

Postscript: Now Tilly only gets felt mice, and remarkably enough, they stay intact. Well, except for the tails.