There’s a stray cat in my neighborhood. A furry black and white beastie. He is very furtive, but I see him occasionally, sprinting from hiding place to hiding place. Now, I don’t feed this cat. (Well, once about two years ago, but not at all since then.)
Lately, this cat (or some other more invisible cat) has begun leaving dead critters at my back doorstep: chipmunks, mice, rats, etc. Possibly, the cat is trying to tell me I should think about an exterminator. Leaving that aside, I hear cat owners talk about how their cats will do the same sort of thing: bring kills to their doorstep.
So what gives? Why is this cat leaving tiny carcasses for me? Is it a bizarre form of worship? I mean, I know I cut a striking figure and all. Hushed admiration, I can understand, but worship?
What explains such cat behavior? Why did the cat pick me, of all the people in the neighborhood?
Frankly, I am not a god who requires animal sacrifice. The lessons of Cain and Abel notwithstanding, from my point of view some carrots would be nice.
A cat? Worshipping a human? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
You don’t know cats very well, do you? What it’s telling you is, “You’re looking kind of scrawny. You should eat better. Here, let me help. It’ll make up for the food you gave me a couple of years ago.”
You may be right, but I’d like more info if you have it. What is the explanation for the behavior?
On the other hand, if I am being worshipped as a god, what’s expected of me? Should I step out the back door occasionally and make an elaborate production of striking a match (FIRE! THE GREAT ONE HAS MADE FIRE!) or what?
“here, this house has been nice to me, i should bring the person a gift so that it is remembered that i am to be rewarded for my offering, perhaps given a warm shelter when it rains or is cold, purr purr purr.”
Cats tend to do this for their owners because it’s normal adult kitty training for kittens - bring them dead animals to eat, then later live (barely) animals so they can develop their hunting skills. So if you had a pet cat I’d certainly understand this, but a stray that you don’t interact with leaving kills on your doorstep? That’s odd. I’d think he’d just eat them himself.
I have a dog- a half Jack Russell/half don’t ask don’t tell terrier- who is very catlike. He’s killed rats and mice and never tries to eat them (he gets plenty to eat so he can’t be hungry), he just leaves them on the back porch. I think it’s less tribute to than his way of saying, to borrow-a- line-from-Coraline, “I don’t like rats at the best of times”. Could be the same with the cat.
Incidentally, my dog’s (literal) ratkilling (there was a problem in my neighborhood for a while with the bastards, not sure why) is incredible, better than any cat I’ve ever seen. In one of those “sometimes we forget they’re animals” things it was shocking to see that all of these years he was a pampered house dog his obsessive constant demands for anyone with a thumb to throw the tennis ball were his way of, essentially, drilling. The same moves when he kills rodents, and the cute little way he shakes his chewtoys is the same way he snaps their necks. Makes me glad he weighs 20 lbs. and likes me.
Makes perfect sense, that’s what terriers were bred for in the first place, to control rats (as well as some other animals). “Ratting” was a popular sport in England a long time ago, put a terrier in a pit with a bunch of rats and see how many he’d kill in a certain amount of time.
Today there was a crow at my back door eating the latest “offering.”
Now I’ve been living in the city for a while, so I’m a little rusty on my hillbilly signs and portents, but I’m pretty sure having a crow at your back door isn’t a good thing.
