We had a cat that became a house at a little too late in life. He liked to go outside, but didn’t much like using the door, so we usually left a window open. I don’t know how he survived as an alley cat, because he was very good at catching things but very rarely killed or ate what he caught. We had more birds flying around the house than I can count. There was a baby rabbit once. But the worst was the day I picked up a plastic bag from the floor and looked inside when I realized it was too heavy to be empty. It contained a very scared, very much alive rat, plus kind of a lot of rat pee. I dropped the bag in surprise, and unfortunately, the rat went streaking out of the bag and disappeared into the kitchen while I tried to gather my courage. Never saw the rat again, so I’ll assume he made his way back outside.
Into the house? Not much. After the cat brought a live baby bunny into the house, we explained to her that those were outside toys. We also stopped leaving the door open. She tried to bring a live chipmunk indoors, but I wouldn’t open the door for her, and when she meowed to complain, it fell out of her mouth and after being briefly stunned, it ran away.
Near the house? One of our cats killed a gray squirrel and dragged it over to show us. He was very proud of that. He killed more chipmunks than I could count, but rarely brought them to us. The same girl who brought the bunny indoors often left half a bunny for us on the front steps, and sometimes a snake (always missing the head), or a vole, or a mouse. She used to bring us gold finches, but I took down the bird feeder – it has become a cat feeder.
Oh, and another time, we’d left the cat windows open in the garage, and a found a very frightened baby bunny the cat had deposited in the back seat for safe keeping.
My childhood cat brought in a dove, a dead duckling, and a mouse. I have a vivid memory of being 7 or 8 and coming down the hallway to see a mouse zoom by, followed by the cat, the family dog, and my mom with a broom raised over her head.
I also pulled live sparrows from her mouth.
A past dog would bring home random deer parts and once brought home a pair of granny panties and a child’s shoe.
One of my dogs brought a pretty good sized box turtle into the house. She had been outside in the yard, and breezed past me when she came back in. She settled down in the living room, and it wasn’t until I walked through the room again that I stopped to look at what she was playing with. An actual, live turtle! He looked none the worse for wear, so I picked him up and carried him back out to the creek in the back yard.
I got into the habit of checking her for any further playmates when she came in the house after that.
She was actually quite the hunter–moles were her specialty. She’d sniff the ground for a while, and dig a hole in the exact right spot, then pull out a mole. I’m eternally grateful she never gifted me with a mole…they are creepy little things.
Oops, typo: we’d left open the car window. The bunny was in the back of our car, in the footwell.
I used to have this tiny little tortie, her specialty was snakes. Brought home a garter snake one time that seemingly weighed as much as she did, I always wondered how she made the jump up to the cat window with it in her mouth.
The family dog brought home a baby possum and a baby squirrel, about 10 years apart.
One of the cats raised the possum and Mom raised the squirrel.
Over the years our cat(s) have imported:
Dead unless noted
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mice (some alive)
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gophers
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lizards (Southern Alligator; Skinks; Glass Lizard) some alive
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birds (some colorful/remarkable, but mostly LGB’s) some alive
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baby rabbits
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shrew
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bat (recently, here in Idaho; took corpse to the vet, she sent it to Boise for rabies testing, result was negative)
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baked potato (a whole one, liberated from neighbors barbecue trash in the middle of the night, cleverly hidden on the center of the bathroom floor where barefooted Mrs. Cretin found it in the dark, the hard way)
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crab leg, (the very next night, same details as the potato except for how Mrs. C discovered it)
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mole
Pedantic nitpickers may point out that technically speaking, a potato isn’t an animal. Well, Mrs. C knows from experience that a cold, soft, baked potato laying on a cold bathroom floor in the middle of the night, in the dark, feels VERY much like a dead animal when trod upon by the toes of a bare left foot. That’s good enough for me, so by mildly abusing the “walks like a duck” rule, I’m counting it as an animal.
My dog (who has since passed away, sadly) would always pile her toys in a certain spot. One day I looked at the pile and thought, “That toy looks awfully realistic.”. Looked closer and it was a pigeon.
My cat Dusty would ring the doorbell to get in (more about that later.) One night, when we had another couple over for cards, the doorbell rang. I said it was probably Dusty, and I opened the door. She trotted in proudly with a mourning dove in her mouth. I talked her into letting go of it so I could put the carcass in the trash. The dove, very much alive, had other plans. He flew around the living room a couple times until he had the sense to flee out the open front door.
Now, about that doorbell… Dusty was in the habit of scratching at the front door to be let in. When we got a new door with rubber gaskets, she was tearing up the gasket. I had a great idea. I put a second doorbell button, facing up, on a piece of scrap wood, where she had been scratching. After two days of waiting for her to train herself, she learned. Put your paw here, and the door will open.
People were amazed at the cat doorbell, especially the UPS guy, who came to call it “the house with the doorbell-ringing cat.”