Niles is distraught after receiving divorce papers from Maris. In an attempt to cheer up his brother, Frasier urges Niles to see the divorce as a new beginning, but Niles is unable to put a positive spin on the situation.

Meanwhile, Martin and Daphne find a journal Frasier and Niles’s mother kept when they were babies. After perusing the journals, Frasier tells Niles about the parallels between what their mother wrote about them as kids and how they’ve evolved as adults. In fact, she viewed them as having weak personalities. Determined to prove that he’s no “pushover,” Niles signs the divorce papers.

Feeling powerful and manly, Niles returns to Frasier’s condo and asks him to read more of their mother’s journal. Before long, they realize that her observations were about her two lab rats and not them. Niles is beside himself when he realizes that he just made a life-changing decision based on his mother’s “obsession with vermin.” Just as he begins to panic, Maris calls to say that the divorce papers were just a bluff and that she wants to seek counseling for their marriage.