Are Mice Good Cat Food?

Factual Questions
1

I have two questions. I have a cat about 5 years old, really cute (I put that in so when I read this to her she’ll be happy)

Anyway about 6 days ago I noticed she stopped eating. I wasn’t concerned at first but by day three I was a bit worried. I noticed her, for lack of a better phrase, litterbox habbits were normal, so I was puzzled. Yesterday was day six of her not eating so I spent the day following her.

She was fine during her six day of not eating her cat food. No changes in her habbits at all.

So yesterday I followed her and discovered she could open the basement door. I followed her down there and to my horror I found a bunch of mice remains. It looked like at least 10 mouse tails.

This brings up two questions, first of all are mice good cat food? Seems ridiculous to ask, after all that’s what cats eat? But she hasn’t touched her cat food in six days. Well now I know why, she’s eating mice. No wonder her littlerbox habbits were the same.

She certainly isn’t different in terms of activity, she bounces around the house as always.

I spent the day with my husband and we searched the house for signs of mice. You know chewings, droppings etc, and I could find nothing upstairs. I couldn’t find a hole in the basement, but the mice probably aren’t very big.

Which brings me to my second question, are cats effective exterminators? Should we call one in, or should I let the cat do it’s thing. We’ve lived in the house for about years and we’ve never seen a mouse or any indications of one before.

I know it sounds naive to ask if it’s good to let a cat eat mice, I guess the issue is realizing my sweet little kitty is a vicious and effective mouse murderer

:slight_smile:

2

My personal guess would be that proper cat food, while not necessarily necessary, is probably still more healthy and your cat will live a longer life if it eats cat food than if it just eats meat. But a few days eating mice isn’t going to have much effect either way, other than clearning your basement of unwanted rodents. Once the mice are all gone, she’ll go back to her food.

3

Mice certanly can’t be the only thing in a cat’s diet, but once and awhile it can’t hurt. I’ve always thought mice were more of an entertainment than food for the modern cat. I realize that cats have been living on mice for centuries, but they surely must get other nutrition elsewhere. (?)
Just the smell of a cat in most places will keep the mice away. Maybe Vetbridge will be along with some real help. :slight_smile:

4

Love to eat them mousies
Mousie’s what I love to eat.
Bite they little heads off
Nibble on they tiny feet.
– B. Kliban

5

Welcome to the SDMB! You should know that there is an iron-clad rule here, that any post about your cat must have pictures posted too. :smiley:

Let’s see, five mouse tails in six days. Less than a mouse/day, doesn’t seem enough, eh? However, if she is that good a mouser, it is likely she may be finding some field mice and/or birds outdoors too.

No normal healthy cat will ever starve to death if there is food in the dish, so don’t worry about that.

I can’t answer your question about the nutrition quality of mice, but somebody will probably know. However, around the world for centuries, farmers and homeowners have raised a gazillion cats who have lived off “the land” or wherever they lived, so I expect they are so constituted that they can survive on such game.

As long as she seem healthy and happy, don’t worry. If anything is wrong, you’ll be the first to know!

As to Q #2, of course they are effective exterminators. That’s why many people keep 'em, and she will also rid your house of any rats, snakes, scorpions, and other wildlife.

I also can’t speak to the value of mousies as their only food, but they are carnivores, so expect it’s fine. You might ask your vet about vitamin supplements. One thing, however, is that you should have her checked a couple of times a year for worms. And fleas. And ear mites, etc.

All of this can be avoided, of course, if you make her an indoor cat. Then you won’t have to brood about keeping a vicious murderer, as you so aptly describe her.

6

From my reading of the OP, kitty IS an indoor cat. She’s been hunting in the basement.

7

IANAVet, but I am an avid raw-food-for-pets advocate. What better food is there than whole small animals to feed an obligate carnivore that’s evolved to eat whole small animals? I have always thought it dubious that heavily grain-based foods were considered appropriate diets for cats.*

As long as you’re not setting out poison for the mice, I can’t imagine why eating them would harm her, and I’d even go so far to say that whole mice are a better, more nutritionally complete diet than the vast majority of dry, kibble foods. Our cats get a variety of raw foods, but a good part of their diet is (frozen, thawed) mice.

They kill one in the house occasionally, but I’ve never otherwise seen evidence of rodent infestation, so to answer your last question, I bet she’s doing a fine job of keeping the resident Mus musculus population at bay :wink:

*Convenient, yes. Cheap? You betcha. Biologically appropriate? Not so much.

8

Thanks for the replies, I guess it’s the shock of knowing you’re sweet little purring kitty is out their offing Mickey and his friends

She’s and indoor/outdoor cat. She won’t go out in the winter, if there’s snow or it’s cold, she looks outside but doesn’t want to go out. In the summer she leaves the house at sundown and does whatever cats do outside till I go to bed and call her in. I have never seen her kill anything before. We have a huge yard for her to explore

It’s been a really cold and snowy winter and maybe that drove the mice in. I guess in the day and age of babying animals, it took me for a bit of a surpise, and I guess cats do prefer real food (mice) to cat food.

I guess I’ll leave the cat food in the dish and let her do her thing, like I said she hasn’t changed her behavior at all.

9

Yes, quite effective. Eventually, even the smell of cats around the house will encourage mice to find a cat-free house elsewhere.

And mice aren’t so damaging to a house. unlike termites, etc. Unlike farms with bins full of grain, in houses the most they will do is get into your cupboards where food is available. If you haven’t seen signs of that, I wouldn’t bother with an exterminator.

Ha! My cats have proceeded to kill or scare off any mice in the house, so now they catch them in the backyard or garage, and bring them inside the house to show me what they’ve caught. Then they proceed to turn them loose in the living room, and chase them back and forth across the room between them.

10

So, you don’t eat meat?

11

Of course I eat meat, I know it’s not logical, but you don’t think of your kitty cat, especially the cutest cat in the world, as being so cold and bloodthirsty…

:slight_smile:

12

She probably does, but most likely not alive. :smiley:

13

There is DEFINITELY something wrong with your cat…the tails are the best part.

14

If you’re really interested, there are YouTube videos that cat owners have put up of their cats eating mice. I was interested to see that they basically just eat their way through the whole mouse, and don’t bother “butchering” or dressing it.

15

As NajaNivea said, the main concern is if the mice have been poisoned themselves. Classic mouse poisons take a couple of days to kill the mice, so it’s conceivable that they could have been running around well enough to deliver a wad of poison to kitty. If you and the neighbors haven’t been out poisoning mice, though, then I wouldn’t be super concerned. Worth asking, though.

If she’s otherwise healthy, then she’ll supplement her calories with kibble when you aren’t looking. Just make sure the bowl stays where she can reach it. Nutritionally, mice are pretty good. Remember, she’s eating their intestines and bones too, with all their vitaminy goodness.

16

Congratulations - not all housecats are good mousers because of the plentiful easy food that’s lying around. Random and Tiger were very good hunters, Turbulence would let a mouse eat from her cat dish.

One caution - mice often have worms, and if the cat eats a mouse with worms, the cat gets the worms. Keep an eye on the litter box for tiny squirmy white things about the size of a small grain of rice.

Ain’t beasties fun?

17

EX-cellent cat names.

18

le ministre beat me to it, but he/she is quite right. worms are definitely something to be concerned about. IANAV, but i do know humans have no trouble picking them up from an infected animal – and it’s not as uncommon as you might think for kids to have contracted round worm!

if i had my druthers, i’d stop the mousing, if at all possible. it’s an occupational hazard for mousers, but not a mandatory one. hopefully **vetbridge ** will wander in and elaborate on this.

19

My only concern would be that hunted food might conceivably make your cat sick if the prey was sick before being caught. There was at least one case in Germany of a cat contracting avian flu from eating a bird.

20

Cat worm pills are cheap, one pill (or partial pill if it is a small cat) every three months. Human deworming pills are a lot of money.

Our little Harry will pop into the field for 3 minutes, come out with a mouse, torture it for an hour, eat it and hop back into the field.