Mutilated cat - could this be the work of animals

[hilarity n. suze]

All right. Today we came home from buying new colored light bulbs--since everybody on our block has outdone themselves with the decorations we figured we could at least change the plain light bulbs into colored ones for a couple of weeks--and there, in the street right in front of our driveway, was the carcass of a cat.

It was a black and white cat. We have one of those. So before doing the whole light thing we went inside to make sure they were there, and they were.

Next guess, it was my next-door neighbor's cat. I went next door (and boy did I ever not want to do that). Next door neighbor not home, but her cat was.

We--this was my teenaged son and I--kept saying things like, "Well, I hope it wasn't xxxx's cat," and then stopping, because whether we knew them or not, it was somebody's cat, and now it's dead.

But it gets worse. He went closer to see if there was a collar or something and it turned out to be just the back half of somebody's cat. Cleanly cut in half, no blood.

It was really freaky, and really brought us down from the semi-festive mood we had worked ourselves into by buying colored light bulbs.

As dusk fell, my husband saw a fox racing down the street.