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Where We Left Off:
The case covered a few of the instances of mouse investigations inside the main residence and Winchester-Nabu Detective Agency offices.
Zorro:
Before we begin this murder mystery which may drum up feelings of sadness, we have a brief update on the bears. Now that Segment A is over and 392 bears were killed inside the borders of New Jersey, we have had sightings of two adults and one of the cubs.
As with classic noir feature films, this mystery presents itself in black and white. Not the entire scene, mind you. This time, it’s the victim. I’m going to present this case more in a more linear fashion from how we discovered it rather than beginning with the victimology.
The Location
Gus and I found the bone at one of the entryways to some trees he loves. I dubbed them the Gus Superhighway long before the new Lord and Lady of the back 40 decided we were not up to their standards to have on their property. Despite their feelings on the matter, Gus still loves those trees.
Something happened on September 14, 2024. As we were exiting through the bumpy separation between the row of stone that goes up the mountain as if it were Nature’s property line, Gus sniffed around through some small plants. Because of the incline, I was at an odd angle with one foot at his level and one foot in a ditch. That’s when I realized he smelled something first before moving on to find an appropriate safe plant for chewing. The bone looked a lot like a stick. To someone not paying attention, they would have gone right next to it without stumbling upon this evidence of a mystery.
Finding the Evidence
During an excursion to the Forbidden Forest of the Northern Woods, Gus found remains—not an entire body. A bone. A long bone that looked like it came from a small mammal to be specific.
Our cases were flooding in. Personally, I have had a difficult time keeping up with writing their reports and cataloging the thousands of pieces of evidence (digital and physical). They don’t care that I’m overwhelmed. I can’t remember the last time I washed my hair! Gus gets upset when I’m not exactly where he expects to find me, but sometimes I have leave the house without him and he hates that!
The Possibilities Searched
It took about six weeks until we could sit down at the computer and scour reference images to identify the bone. Gus sat next to me while I searched BoneID.net. At first, we thought it was a femur because of the bulbous head at the one end. When no matches came up, Gus and Oliver told me to move on the next most likely bone with a shape like this (since the distal end was missing). That would be the humerus bone; the upper arm bone.
This bone had something unique that I had never seen in a larger size mammal humerus. At the broken end, there was an oblong hole. In bone terminology, a hole that goes all the way through is usually called a foramen, as was the case with this bone after we narrowed down the species. It’s called the supracondyloid foramen.
- Opossum: too small
- Striped Skunk: too small
- Great Horned Owl: too large and wrong shape
- Grey fox: close in size lengthwise, but too thick and wrong shape
- Eastern cottontail: too small
- Domestic cat (Felis catus): MATCH
Victimology
We haven’t seen the cat code named Lokai since March 15, 2024. This was a beautiful cat with an incredibly unique, therefore easily identifiable, coat pattern of swirled black and white. Such curves flowed in waves around this feline body like a work of art, perhaps an artist known for sculpting smooth graceful curves like Blake McFarland. You could compare Lokai’s patterns to a swirled soft-serve ice cream.
Lokai hunted here like all preferential serial killers—feline ones anyway. There was ample prey so the cat was spotted on the trailcam frequently from when Burton Guster Nabu and Oliver Winchester expanded our sightings database from wild animals to domestic intruders. Between October 2023 and March 15, 2024, Lokai was caught on camera 11 times. With so many freely-roaming cats crossing through the property and some brazen enough to be right against the house taunting Oliver and Gus, we hadn’t felt the need to open a case file about one of them who might have moved away from the neighborhood. A lot of houses were sold and purchased since the pandemic. For all we knew, Lokai’s family packed up and moved away.
“That’s a comforting idea,” Oliver said, “but chances are, that bone is Lokai.”
Gus agreed. “The most recent months show that corrupt clone of mine, Bud, and other cats that are probably without families.”
“A couple of them, including Bud, seem well-fed,” I said. “Anyway, the point is we have to consider the real possibility that this bone belonged to Lokai. We know Mittens died this year. Lokai hasn’t been seen.”
Who Did It?
We needed to know who killed this beautiful cat we called Lokai. Mittens was hit by a car. None of the humans reported smelling roadkill recently, but trying to remember if we did back in March was asking too much of our little grey cells.
The vulture that came around on Gus Day 2024 (March 17) was after something else. We closed that case when we saw the body of a dead small red squirrel. If there was a much larger body not far away, the scavengers should have been focused on that.
“Maybe they were and we didn’t notice,” Gus said. “You’re not always here to work.”
Oh, I sensed the cattiness in his voice. I have enough guilt about his feelings of abandonment. I miss him when I’m gone too!
Ollie spoke while my jaw hung open and no words could come out. “I’ve studied the surveillance footage of the weeks around Lokai’s last known appearance. Here’s what the list I’ve come up with, but I’m afraid I’m not confident about any of these suspects.”
First, Ollie presented Gus and I with the following list:
- a fox
- an osprey (unusual for the neighborhood)
- a red-tailed hawk
- ravens
We also have daily visits from vultures who are far more likely to scavenge than kill. None of us were confident in this list of suspects.
We know the osprey was rare to see around the estate, but also, they eat 99% fish. It was far too unlikely that an osprey would go after a mammal, especially one larger than a squirrel.
The ravens keep their distance and are more like vultures from what we’ve personally observed of their eating habits. They may be big for the birds around here, but unless one of them has a darn good reason, it’s not going to chase down a healthy adult cat.
The most common raptors we have are the red-tailed hawks. They can be substantial in size, but they’re still smaller than a vulture. While being fantastic hunters of small mammals, again, we couldn’t see a red-tailed hawk nor any of the others around here going for cat. We do have large birds like bald eagles and golden eagles, but they also have not been spotted directly around us. They are in neighboring towns. In fact, our meditation coach watch one eating from a deer carcass.
That left the fox—a male fox specifically. Not Joe Vulpesci. He’s a smaller fella. There’s a bigger one around. Let’s code name him Zorro since we’ve never had him on the case board before. According to one of the websites used to research the sizes and eating habits of red foxes, there was a bit that stood out:
Red foxes are omnivores and scavengers and eat a highly varied diet. They feed mostly on small rodents such as voles, mice, hamsters, ground squirrels, gerbils, woodchucks, deer mice, and pocket gophers. They also eat birds, rabbits, porcupines, hares, raccoons, opossums, insects, and small reptiles. Red foxes also consume carrion and d this typically only in the late evening hours and at night. —Animalia.bio
In that list is the name woodchucks which around here in New Jersey, we call groundhogs. Groundhogs are as big as a domestic cat and actually much thicker. They can run faster than you’d expect for there land-sausage shape. When moving slowly, they have an adorable waddle. They also do not want human contact.
If a omnivorous red fox could pick off a groundhog, it is therefore worth considering that one could be motivated to hunt down a cat.
Case Findings:
In the sad case of Lokai disappearing and then being identified by only one bone, we have ruled this as a closed case. The culprit was Zorro, a very large male red fox with a lot of strength. Lokai came across as a prim domesticated cat who hunted for sport and was not trained in combat fighting.
Case Status: Closed
Resources:
“Bud” – also known as “Doppelgus” – has been written about in our cat files before.
http://www.boneid.net/product/proximal-artic-surface-right-cat-humerus/
Suzanne M. Abel collection at BoneID.net