I pit my Cat - No cute pictures here

[Amblydoper]

@CanvasShoes

Really? Do elaborate, this sounds interesting. I’m pretty sure one of mine has tried I wake up with scratches sometimes, is that the sort of thing you mean? (I’m a fairly new cat servant, I’ve only had mine for a little over 3 years for the oldest and about a year and a half for cat #2).

Well, see? The older one is already assembling an army!

[Pushkin]

@StGermain

As far as I can see, my cats have no hunting instinct. 4 of them, and they do zip for mice, moles etc. One of them will occassionally be interested in a passing moth

We finally ended up with one like that. He’s a garage animal, despite the basket and large pillow for him he prefers to crawl off somewhere in the midst of Dad’s assembled rubbish and hide. Open the door for him and he goes out just long enough to be sure the world is still in existence before coming back in :rolleyes:

[Jolly_Roger]

@Mongo Ponton

This morning it was a baby bunny screeching and squealing its way off this mortal coil. Sometime after lunch it was a bird of some sort as evidenced by feathers all through the house.

But tonight was the coup de grace.

I’m sitting out on the porch enjoying a summer evening when he arrives with a large mouse. I told him to take it outside but he just flips me off and is licking it or something. This is apparently not gross enough so he decides he needs to eat it head first which entails crushing its skull into bite size portions.

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch

I leap up from the chair flailing about and yelling, so he laughs and runs under this cart thing that has a shelf about 6” off the floor.

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch

Now I have to pull the cart thing away from the wall and of course it has 20 delicate things on it so it doesn’t move far and it doesn’t move fast. But the cat and I have been to this movie before, he just moves along and stays under the cart.

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch

Ready to puke I start swatting at the cat under the cart ironically yelling “You Rat Bastard” at the top of my lungs. I come away with blood and other matter on my hands. The cursing is the only thing stopping me from hurling all over the porch. I can hear the neighbors laughing. They live about 300 yards away.

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch

I’m able to locate a broom and convince this monster that ‘The Cat Beatings Are About To Begin’ and he runs out the door. All I have to do now is reach around in the dark under this shelf and find the headless corpse and dispose of it. I try to fool myself by using a paper towel but this is just nastiness. If I just throw it in the back yard he’ll find it and bring it right back. I don’t want it rotting in my trash for a week, so I have to take it down across the road and throw it into the woods.

Very nice.

You disgusting, disgusting, son of a bitch!

A little bit of general info from the owner of three cats:

Beating a cat won’t help. they are not like dogs. It will only make the cat scared of you.

As has been mentioned, cats are predators. My cats aren’t outside cats but they will salivate at the window watching birds on the tree outside. None of them (except possibly Jet Jaguar since he was a stray when I adopted him) has ever caught a bird. But its in their nature.

I hate to tell you this, but if I were your neighbor i’d have been laughing too. It is a funny story, though I’m sorry it upset you so much.

[Jolly_Roger]

@Mongo Ponton

The problem isn’t the carnivorous predator. The problem isn’t that my backyard is ‘the killing fields’.

The problem is the show.

He needs to do his thing out there in the yard. Way out there in the yard.

He has the run of the house and there isn’t much I can do about it. After our little scene I went around and closed all the doors so he couldn’t get in and 5 minutes later as I was posting, there he was at my feet. How the hell he got in I don’t know. That’s a battle I lost years ago.

Perfectly adapted killing machine doesn’t begin to describe it. This goes on day after day. Dead animals everywhere. At least once a week I wake up in the morning with something dead in the bed. Bunnies, squirrels, mice, moles, birds and one thing we never did identify. Live bunnies? Common. I throw them over the back fence and wish them Godspeed. Things left in unused parts of the house til the stench wafts up the stairs? Been there, done that.

I’m down with the food chain thing but the line is drawn at ignoring me and crunching up skulls on the back porch.

My others don’t do this.

Two things about this cat.
There is a mouse that shares his food dish in the kitchen and has for some time. He does nothing about it and I think there’s some kind of arrangement I should be worried about.
And the predator has been the prey. He’s the one that was snatched by the hawk (in same said backyard) and had to get 160 stitches in his ass.

**
Your cat is a badass!**

[Jolly_Roger]

@BubbaDog

Look at it this way. Those last moments may be the only interesting thing that they’ve done in their lives.

And don’t act so high and mighty! That celery stalk you’re eating didn’t want to die either.

Like i always say: Vegetarians are crueler than meat eaters…at least a cow has the option to run. I’ve never seen a carrot execute a desperate escape.

[CanvasShoes]

@CoG888

Well, see? The older one is already assembling an army!

Giggle! See how uninformed I am? I didn’t realize it would be that subtle, I thought…you know…that it would be more like an attempted chomp to the jugular or something.

[Harriet_the_Spry]

Did you try a collar with a bell? Mess with his mojo. Tell him he’s leveled up.

[This_ll_Do]

@Zsofia

once stepped in a little pile of cat vomit that consisted entirely of disassembled roach.

Oh, jeeze. I was eatin’ dinner and all!
This is why I don’t have cats.

[Yllaria]

Have you tried overfeeding him to slow him down?

[mnemosyne]

1. put latches on doors and windows, so outside kitty stays outside until YOU let him in (i.e. when he doesn’t have a catch in his mouth)

2. Seal up holes in the wall where the mouse can come from to eat from the kitty’s food bowl. Aluminium foil will do. Just on principle. If the mice are eating cat food, they might be eating YOUR food, too.

3. If the cat has no choice but to be outside when he has a catch, he will
   a) eat the dead animal, maybe only leaving a small, easy to clean up piece behind
   b) kill the dead animal, and leave it there, easy to clean up
   c) not kill the animal, and it will leave and either die from injuries/fear, or run away and never be seen again.
   My parents have a 15 year old cat who hunts year-round, and has only brought things into the house twice… when the door was left open. It’s really not a big deal (unless you’re the catch!)

[j666]

@CanvasShoes

Really? Do elaborate, this sounds interesting. I’m pretty sure one of mine has tried I wake up with scratches sometimes, is that the sort of thing you mean? (I’m a fairly new cat servant, I’ve only had mine for a little over 3 years for the oldest and about a year and a half for cat #2).

Ever watch a cat with a dangling string, or a cornered mouse, or a bee? Notice how they settle in and bat at with a lightening paw?
Ever notice that your cat does that to you when you walk by?

She’s not playing. She’s hunting you. She’s trying to kill and eat you.

[Zulema]

@BubbaDog

Look at it this way. Those last moments may be the only interesting thing that they’ve done in their lives.

And don’t act so high and mighty! That celery stalk you’re eating didn’t want to die either.

Who’s being high and mighty? I’m not a vegetarian, I’m just saying we kill things to eat too so we can’t really criticize the cat.

Advice to the OP

Don’t let the cat have freedom to get in and out at will and make it open mouth meow before you let it in.

Once our cat threw up a hair ball and it contained a little skull and eyes.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Orbifold

So you’re saying that

[ol]
[li]You live near the woods, presumably filled with small animals,[/li][li]you have a cat, which is a carnivorous predator by nature, whom you let outside, and[/li][li]this cat goes into said woods, hunts small animals, drags them home and eats them?[/li][/ol]

Y’see, I’m thinking that 1 and 2 are pretty much inevitably going to lead to 3.

.

To the OP, try to see the bright side. Cat food is expensive. Apparently this is not a problem at all for you.

[Creaky]

@matt_mcl

“He’s so vicious! You know how cats will bring home a little dead present? Like a little dead bunny, or a little dead bird? We’re afraid one of these days he’s going to bring home, like, a little dead five-year-old.”

• Suzanne Westenhoefer

Now that would be cool.

[control-z]

Our cat used to bring home dead birds, baby rabbits, bats(!), snakes. Amazing what it could catch with no front claws. Effective predator indeed.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Jolly Roger

As has been mentioned, cats are predators. My cats aren’t outside cats but they will salivate at the window watching birds on the tree outside. None of them (except possibly Jet Jaguar since he was a stray when I adopted him) has ever caught a bird. But its in their nature. .

Our cats are indoors-only cats, but the do the bird thing too. The wildest one, that we took in as a stray kitten, has been known to watch through the balcony door for hours because he saw a mouse earlier.