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Where We Left Off:

The detective agency had a perplexing case about people trespassing on the property for a treasure hunt!

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My Blue Heaven:

Back in August, Oliver, Gus, and I discovered a crime scene at the Big Rock area. This is one of the spots where we feed birds and critters. There’s always a lot of activity when the snacks are out. A patch of grass was covered in what were clearly blue jay feathers.

“We don’t need to collect the feathers,” Oliver said.

“What about evidence?” Gus asked his cousin.

“We know the Blue Jay Gang well.” Oliver sniffed a feather I held up to his screen. “I know who this feather belongs to. Rather, belonged to.”

It wasn’t always this easy to identify a victim. This case could have been a lot more difficult to solve without that first piece of information.

Victimology

Name: Blutocki

Affiliates: Bluejay Gang, often partnered with Sprysak

Date of Death: 26-Aug-2025

Finding the Killer

After an otherwise beautiful morning on patrol and staking out key spots, Gus and Ollie were ready to go home for Second Breakfast. For me, it would be coffee at my desk. When they were ready, we started digging into the murder of Blutocki. I had to refill the puzzle game with treatos first. They like to snack while they think, as do I. Gus spun his game pieces to release all the freeze-dried chicken. Ollie doesn’t play that game. For him, I created a trail of treats leading to his office and added some catnip to his soft mat flooring.

“Blutocki and his old partner, Sprysak, have been outcasts since they arrived,” Gus explained. “They never truly fit in with the organization.”

“You have to remember,” Ollie began, “Those two came from Brooklyn and mainly know the gang under the rule of Mickey Blue, not Louie Eggs.”

My curiosity grew. “And you think they would have fit in better if Louie Eggs were still in charge?”

“I do,” Gus said. “You have to admit—things ran more smoothly when he was calling the shots.”

Oliver started to feel the effects of the catnip. He melted into the floor of his office and put his chin on his front paws. Gus jumped up to my bed and paced until he decided where to lie down into a loaf shape.

Could the leadership change in the gang have anything to do with the murder? Since the cats knew a lot about the smaller birds here, I asked for their opinions.

Ollie’s eyes were closing. He didn’t have a lot of working time left before he was completely asleep. Gus hadn’t made biscuits on the bed yet. I’d get some overtime out of him.

“Mickey Blue wouldn’t send in backup to protect Blutocki and Sprysak if they ran into trouble,” Gus said. “That’s what I think happened.”

“Okay,” I lingered on the word. “So, Mickey Blue wasn’t about to go the extra mile to protect Blutocki. We better look at the surveillance to find the time of death window and see if any suspects were in the area.”

I opened up the camera feeds to see what had happened from the time we discovered the feathers at the Big Rock and earlier. This time, it did not take long to find our usual suspect—Bud. He was there only minutes before we were. That explains why Gus ran all the away across to the woods where we used to climb on trees and go hiking. Bud was headed right for that area at 05:48 AM.

To conduct due diligence, I kept weeding through the images and videos. The only other predator was a fox who came through at 02:27 AM. Bud was also hunting at 11:19 PM that night. But the fox was also hunting earlier at 09:45 PM. I could not believe it when I found another suspect! At 09:19 PM, MamaCat Marsh was here too. All of that doesn’t even include the deer family and raccoons who were here. This place was busy with creatures!

Narrowing the List of Suspects

Time was ticking and I could see Gus getting sleepy. He needed his nap like Ollie. I turned around in my chair and left them alone to sleep for three hours. They got up for lunch. I downed the remaining few sips of my coffee and walked with them to the kitchen where we met The Cook. She prepared their dishes and led Oliver to his special spot for dining. I took Gus’ dish and served him in the kitchen. I grabbed vegan yogurt and granola for myself and went back upstairs to wait for them.

The fellas returned to the office for dessert and bathing routines. In between chicken treatos, they worked through the case at hand.

“Guys,” I said, “we need to narrow down the timeline. What are your thoughts?”

Oliver, who is the most tuned into the bird community, said, “The blue jays are quiet at night like other songbirds. They don’t leave the trees and nests until sunrise.”

“And that’s when we’re outside distributing the birdseed.” Gus took three more spins of his game. It went too fast for any of the treats to fall out. That G-force! It didn’t make sense to him: spin tube, treat falls, eat treat. Clearly, the physics were working against him.

If the blue jay was attacked when it came to the Big Rock after we put the seeds out, and Bud was still lurking because Gus wanted to keep chasing him. This means Bud was the only suspect on our list in the area at the time of the crime!

Case Findings:

On an August morning, Gus and Oliver discovered a pile of feathers in front of the Big Rock where we feed the birds and critters. The cats’ exceptional olfactory senses told us that the feathers belonged to Blutocki, a member of the Blue Jay Gang. The amount of feathers found told us that he had to have died from an attack and it was not a natural shedding. We checked our surveillance footage to create the suspect list and whittled it down to one. The Gus lookalike, Bud, was stalking the estate from 11 PM to 5:48 AM when Gus chased him into the woods.

Case Status: Closed