We can’t look away.

Though many of us at Polygon are longtime musical theater nerds with way too much knowledge of the original Cats, the 2019 film adaptation still took us by surprise. As our review bluntly stated, “Cats is what you’d see if your third eye suddenly opened.” The big-budget musical journey only grew weirder and weirder as the release went on; in March, someone with ties to the production tweeted about a supposed “butthole cut” of Cats waiting for the world to (never un)see. Of course there was.

Using a blend of live-action performance and CG sculpture, The King’s Speech director Tom Hooper turned Cats — an already strange, non-narrative musical about felines gearing up for death — into the year’s best bad movie, worthy of “Rowdy Cats” screenings and hundreds of cursed GIFs. Many will spend their lives wondering why Rebel Wilson unzipped her skin before biting the heads off cockroaches with human faces. Concept art released in the extras of the movie’s home video release shows an even more realistic, frightening take.

Upon release last December, Cats’ visual effects became as notorious as the narrative choices, thanks to what was essentially a visual effects patch released for the second week of release. The fury hit its peak at the 2020 Oscars, when James Corden and Rebel Wilson appeared in cats costumes to poke fun at the end results. (Actual VFX artists, who put time and sweat into finishing the film on time, didn’t care for the gag.) Then, a few weeks later, the tweet happened.

Amplified by the likes of Seth Rogen and Knives Out director Rian Johnson, “#ReleaseTheButtholeCut” became both a shitposting alternative to Zack Snyder fans and a genuine call for the team behind Cats to somehow double down on the out-of-body experience of the Andrew Lloyd Webber movie musical extravaganza.

Was Hooper really sitting on a cut of Cats full of tiny kitty buttholes? An anonymous VFX artist eventually followed up on the original Twitter thread to nuance the claim.

We may never know if any of the Cats cats ever had clean, calculated, CG buttholes, but the team at XVP Comedy weren’t waiting to find out. While FX artists may have erased some of Old Deuteronomy’s anus-looking hair patterns out frame by frame, XVP’s latest video uses some quick fixes to “release” the butthole cut. Warning: after watching this video, you may immediately transcend to cat heaven.