I am your cat. I bring to you an offering I’ve caught.
It is the wild and elusive PINECONE!
It took hours to stalk and capture it, but I bring it before you as a gift of my love for my human.
*
Sheeesh!
For the last 3 weeks my cat has been bringing me pinecones. Sometimes 5-6 a night. (they must be in season) He comes in the cat door, yelling of his prize for me at, tail proud in the air. He drops them at my feet.
Thunk
“MEEEEEEOW!”
Last week I found around 16 pinecones outside the cat door.
Every morning I pick pinecones up from the kitchen, living room, dining room floor. I found one in my bed friday morning.
It’s great and sweet and all, and I’m flattered my cat loves me so much to catch me wild pinecones. But I look outside at the trees and see not one, not two, not ten, but hundreds upon hundreds of pinecones still on the branches… soon to be in my house.
There was a cat in my city once who loved to nick off with neighbours’ shoes, socks and panties. Would leave 'em on the doorstep – must have turned the owner’s place into the local lost and found office.
My sympathies with the pinecones. But, like you said – there’s worse.
Perhaps he’s thinking that a few pine trees is just what your living room needs and doesn’t realize that floorboards and bedsheets aren’t very conducive in promoting seed growth. Mother Nature has all sorts of strange ways to spread herself around.
Years ago, my first husband and I had this cat who once brought us the back end–JUST the back end–of a mole. Bleargh!
Anyway, we told him what a good kitty he was, affirmed that yes, he was the Mightiest Hunter Kitty in all of Kittydom, and all of that stuff that you’re supposed to do when cats bring you these gifts. That was all he needed, I guess, because he didn’t bring us any more stuff after that. Praise Goddess. That was just so gross.
Sell 'em on eBay. The pinecones, not the cat, though you COULD mention that these pinecones were specially hunted down. Seriously, some people do sell pinecones on eBay, I believe that they’re generally listed under craft materials.
Consider yourself lucky. One day, my mom stepped barefooted right on a mouse our cat brought into the house. Ewww. This cat also had the annoying habit of bringing in live birds that would fly around our living room until we could catch and release them. Once she brought in a cicada, which we thought was dead, but was apparently playing possum–it didn’t move until my dad tossed it out a window.
What we wouldn’t have given for one wild pinecone . . .
When I was younger, my family lived on the Chain of Lakes in northern Illinois. It was great – go swimming whenever you wanted, your own pier to fish from, boating and waterskiing…
Until the day we got our cats. Two of 'em, and we decided to make them outdoor cats instead of keeping them in the house. They were pretty cool pets all told, except for their habit of dragging dead carp that had washed up on shore and leaving them on the front porch for us. After a couple of weeks of this, they switched tactics. Yes, sir, no longer would they leave fish out for us where we could find them…
Now they’d leave them UNDER the porch.
And let me tell you, not much smells worse than week-old fish rotting away under your front porch in the middle of August. Yuch.
My cat (indoor only) was jabbering with something just outside the screen door. I checked to be sure that it wasn’t a hostile, male cat that might spray all over out back door (I hate that!). It was another cat… sitting beside a skunk. No pouncing was involved, everyone just sat around looking at each other before eventually dispersing amicably. It was weird though because both cats were making chirrupy noises, so it really did look like some kind of roundtable discussion.
I’d hate to see a cat-skunk battle though. Stinkiness aside, those badger-like beasts are tougher than they look!
My friend’s cat used to leave dead hares on their deck.
My cat stalks leaves all day long. After hours of stealthy maneouvers he will initiate a wild pounce and, with luck, will manage to wrestle one into submission. Then he comes slinking home with his prey, looking nervously over each shoulder and deposits it in the house so that mere humans may admire his prowess. He is a fine provider for his family.
My cat is a little murderer. Much like an old ex who is now in prison. However, my cat tends to only kill vermin so it is ok because of course I would never condone anything illegal. :rolls eyes
I found a decrapitated mouse buried in my (clean) laundry last week. It was totally disgusting.
The week before last she was coming in the house with a mousie. I yelled “HEY!” as she was entering. This surprised her, she dropped the mouse and ran outside. The mouse ran inside. Chaos ensued.
My felines bring me back small mammals (neatly killed with the neck broken, and mostly intact) and the occasional bird wing. Or leg. Never a whole bird, and never a live animal (good thing my cats are wild enough to quickly dispatch their prey, as dealing with a wounded mole isn’t high on my list). They’re well-fed and all that, but hunting instincts die hard, and dietary supplements are welcome.
A coworker of mine has a cat who would go out and steal the neighbor’s 3-year old daughter’s swimsuits off the clothesline and bring them home. Several times a summer, Katie would have to take the swimsuits back to the neighbors, apologizing. They thought her husband was a pedophile and moved away.
My parents’ cat once brought in a bird and commenced to strew it all over the carpet in their bedroom. Dad got up in the middle of the night to get some water, and, in the moonlight through the window, saw…something on the floor. Thinking “What the hell?” he turned on the light. Bloody feathers everywhere. They were sweeping and scrubbing their carpet at 3:00 in the morning.
Aw, geez, at 7:40 am Saturday, every bluejay in the southern half of my county was in my pine trees, screaming. I knew what that meant, and went outside and looked over my fence into the “woods” behind my house. The thicket of brush was moving so I called my little huntres, Molly. She came out of the thicket and jumped the fence into the yard. The jays kept screaming, so I called my fat-cat, Punkin, who also came out of the thicket. I got them in the house and the jays stopped screaming. I wondered why it was so easy to get them in the house. I figured it out later, when I found the dead jay dragged into the yard–they’d already killed it. :mad:
Our current cat doesn’t bring us offerings – he learned his lesson years ago. We were visiting my parents, and he managed to get one of their beloved finches from their extensive birdfeeding arrangement in front of the bay window. He brought the dead bird into the living room, and we yelled at him and I was tasked with dumping the dead bird in the ivy. The cat followed me with a quizzical expression: “What are you doing? That’s good eatin’! What a waste.” Anyway, now we just find half-eaten birds in the lawn, mostly when they chunk up into the lawn mower.
Even better: The cat we had when I was a child would bring us snakes and, I’m not making this up, crabs. (We had a house on a saltwater inlet.) Few things are funnier than a cat with a crab body in its mouth, the hard legs sticking out the sides like big crustaceal whiskers.
:mad: