Kitty versus squirrel

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

We let our cat go outside – but being responsible owners, we don’t let her roam.

Instead, when I get home from work, I put the beast on an eight-foot leash tied to the base of a post on our deck. This allows Kitty to patrol a small portion of the back yard and to lurk under the steps of the deck.

Yesterday afternoon, I did the cat thing as per usual and sat down in the back room to peruse the newspaper. Soon, my reading was interrupted by some animal squealings.

“Good,” thought I. “Kitty has caught another field mouse sneaking around our house looking to find a warm place to spend the winter. That’s one less for me to trap later.”

But then it struck me that the squealing was WAY too loud and fierce for a mouse.

So I rush outside, run down the deck steps and there I see Kitty, all 4-5 pounds of her, on top of a grey squirrel, pinning it to the ground. The squirrel is screaming bloody murder as Kitty’s bared teeth are making thrust after thrust at its throat.

The squirrel is at least 50 percent bigger than Kitty, but as I learned yesterday, Kitty is quite fearless, which is all the more amazing because on her front paws, she’s been de-clawed.

Anyway, I was momentarily stunned by this bizarre sight, but soon yanked Kitty’s leash and pulled her off the squirrel, which scampered away, still screeching, and ran up the nearest tree.

I didn’t check this morning to see if there was a dead squirrel at the base of that tree. I think it’s going to be O.K. But I’ll bet it’s going to think twice before deciding to look for acorns in our back yard again.

I think I did the right thing, by pulling Kitty off of the poor critter, but maybe I should have grabbed the video camera instead.

Any other incredible killer cat stories out there in Dopeland?

2

Wanted to say that I think it’s great that you are putting the kitty on a leash instead of letting her roam unsupervised, but I hope you’ve got her on a harness. A cat should never be tied to a leash on a collar.

Hope your cat is up on the rabies shots, too. You never know why a squirrel let itself be captured by a cat who was restrained on a fairly short leash. It’s a little abnormal.

3

I have 2 brief squirrel stories. Once upon a time I had me a 10 pound orange tabby tom. Never had him fixed because we were rural and moer interested in a large feral cat population to control vermin than we were interested in being correct. Anyway, like all cats he was into bringing us offerings in the wee hours. Mice, voles, shrews, some baby rabbits, etc. The nastiest thing he ever brought me was a bull gray squirrel. I think it did pretty quickly given Tom had bitten it’s throat OUT and let it bleed all over itself. It was an absolute lesson in gore. Odd too, because I thought cats preferred to do their thing on the *back * of the neck, not the front.

Second story: I currently have a neutered male, about 12 years old and very lean & lanky. Picture Jack Lalane as a cat. He got into a rasslin’ match with a gray squirrel and got his face bit up something horrible. He let me treat the resulting infection on his face with hydrogen peroxide & swabs for about a week before his face erupted & we had to take him to the vet for real medicine. He’s fine now, but tends to hang around *inside *the house and help raise the kittens. He’s a damn good cat.

4

When my cat was around a year old we started seeing parts of squirrels laying around. We wondered what was happening so I started checking around from time to time. It seems our cat was killing squirrels and leaving them for the female cat who had kittens under the house next door.

5

I don’t think this quite fits, but it is a story of kitty super strength.

Snowball was a big, fat, fluffy mongrel that was mostly turkish angora (pic is NOT Snowball, but looks like a skinny version of him). He was a big, lineabacker of a cat, almost as big as a Maine coon.

Big, fat, fluffy Snowball would also go out on a leash off the back porch. He had a leather harness not a collar because he almost choked himself once. I’d sit with him and read a book while keeping an eye on him (not a fenced yard, so if a dog or anything else came by the leash would be his demise since he couldn’t run away). The harness was great because in an emergency I could grab the harness and lift him and the leash prevented him from taking off suddenly and leading me on a chase around the neighbourhood.

Suddenly, in the blue sky above there was… a flock of starlings! The shadows of the birds were gliding across the lawn. Mild-mannered news reporter Snowball jumped into a phonebooth and emerged as his heroic alter ego… SuperFluff!

(Cue John Williams musical score).

He started to charge across the lawn in an attempt to apprehend the feared criminal Bird Shadows of Doom. I looked up and waited for him to get to the end of his chain, whereupon he would surely do that jerk-and-flip and land on his back, right?

He had his ears down flat, was charging so low to the grown that his rotund belly was lamost dragging in the grass. He got to the end of his leash and – PING! – kept on going …? …!

Snapped that chain – it didn’t even slow him down.

Never caught the shadows though.

6

I once lived in a very rural area, sharing the property with a large, semi-feral barn cat. One day I walked outside and heard a moist crunching sound. Investigating the source of this intriguing combination of noises, I found the barn cat devouring a grey squirrel. There was no head, I never found it, but the cat had the squirrel in its mouth and was working its way down between the shoulder blades (with the arms sticking out of either side of its mouth). The crunching noise was the sound of the bones being crushed! He proceeded to eat most of the animal, leaving only the arms and legs and tail. That was one tough hombre!

7

We had a kitty who routinely got in to the house with a mouthful of garter snake. Horrifying. …

“Snakes. Why’d it have to be … snakes?”

8

We have a cat, Simon, who spends all kinds of time outdoors, protecting us from nasty critters. It’s not unusual to see the carcass of a lizard dropped by the back door. “Hey, look what I did!” But one day we came home to find the head of a squirrel on the front sidewalk. No torso anywhere, just the head.

It’s strange when you think about it, I could have been rubbing his belly one minute, then he wants to go outside and eat something while it’s still alive.

9

missbunny: Thanks for the tip about the harness. We have a collar, but a harness would be safer.

When I told my wife about the incident, she said that it’s a good thing Kitty is had up to date with her rabies shots. She has the veterinarian duties for this beast, so I’ll take her word for it.

Also, the thought of rabies was the first thing that entered my mind when I came upon the grisly scene, and that’s why I instantly decided to yank the leash and pull Kitty off of the squirrel. (It definitely WASN’T because I have an innate love of squirrels, that’s for sure.)

Finally, I think Kitty got the jump on the squirrel by crouching underneath the steps, out of sight of the squirrel, and then pouncing at the opportune moment.

10

Our dear departed Smokey Cat was an outdoor girl. She wouldn’t come into the house so we did for her what we could. She was a huntress extraordinaire and reminded us often by exhibiting trophies. Several times the trophies were large rats, obviously strays from the high school dumpsterland. Frog legs were a delicacy she loved and the poor amputees were laid often at our doorstep.

My Smokey story began one early morning as I let the dogs out and settled into a comfy porch chair to drink my coffee. Surveying the porch floor, I spied Smokey and her Continental Breakfast which consisted of a small gray, very dead bird. “Oh, yay,” I thought and rachected up my line of vision only to hear what sounded like crunching kibble. When I steeled myself to look down again, two downy feathers were all that remained of the hideous murder. Kind of put me off chicken for a spell. :stuck_out_tongue:

11

I have been hearing a lot of cat vs. squirrel stories lately. Must be that time of the year.

My sister has a cat that is old Old OLD. He’s gets medicine for his kitty arthritis, can’t move very fast and struggles to jump up to the bed. But somehow this cat geezer managed to take down a squirrel and bring it home to my sis, who cleaned it and put it in the fridge for kitty treats later (she hunts squirrel).

12

Well, that’s nice to hear all the tales of cat victorious in feline vs. tree rat… because in my experience, the typical contest of cat vs. squirrel goes like this:

1 - Squirrel sees cat.

2 - Squirrel becomes irritated at presence of cat.

3 - Squirrel climbs out to end of branch nearest cat.

4 - Squirrel barks and flails it’s tail, teasing cat.

5 - Cat inevitably succumbs to instinct and attempts to climb tree to teach squirrel a lesson.

6 - Squirrel waits until cat is halfway up tree trunk, then jumps to the ground and races to a nearyby tree.

7 - Cat, frustrated, climbs down from tree and follows squirrel to nearby tree.

8 - repeat steps 3 thru 7 ad nauseum, until cat becomes completely disgusted and returns home to claw the furniture in frustration.

:smiley:

My Incredible Killer Kat Story:

My mom had a runt Manx cat, named Max. Max the Manx couldn’t have weighed any more than four pounds. But he was an amazing hunter, regularly bringing down fowl three times his size, including ornery critters like crows. Max was a mighty hunter in a tiny package. My theory is that, as a tiny Manx, he had a unique hunting advantage. With his hind legs longer than the front, and just a nub of a tail, it’s likely that a lot of birds mistook him for a rabbit, and let him get too close…

But Max didn’t eat his kills. No, he brought them home as trophies. If you let Max outside, you had to stop him when you let him back in, because about half the time, he’d be dragging a carcass in with him. Or worse, still living prey.

One time I opened the back door to Max’s meowing, and he scampered in before I could stop him. He ran to the kitchen and dropped a small brown object, which tried to scurry under the table, but not faster than Max could pounce on it again. It was a field mouse. Max played cat and mouse with it a minute or two, and I was about to put them both back outside, when suddenly Max proceeded to consume the mouse head first. Skull, fur, bones, guts and all… crunch, crunch, crunch… it didn’t take long at all before the only thing visible was the tail… and that soon disappared, too.

That’s when I realized that we didn’t get any trophy mice, just birds, because Max ate the mice.

Way to go, Max!

Poor Max went out one day, and never came back. I suspect he got mistaken for a rabbit by a bird that was too large for him to fend off…

13

Hmmph. What can I say; I’m not a cat person.

14

I once had a cat who killed a groundhog.

15

We had a killer cat that caught birds (she ate an entire colony one summer, babies and all, much to my mother’s chagrin), mice, rats, and groundhogs. We even had to break up a fight between her and a bobcat! As far as I know she never caught a squirrel. But, she did spend most of her leisure time in the last few years of her life sitting by this (actively used) rabbit hole in the backyard. Soooooo patiently, just sitting there. She never caught one (that we know of), but I like to think of it as her fishing hole. A quiet place she went to meditate and maybe, just maybe, catch a rabbit. I’m sure she gets to chase 'em in cat heaven.

16

A cat lover here with a story to explain why cats are WAY smarter than the dog we had when I was a kid.

Like Bughunter mentioned, the squirrels in our back yard used to love teasing Lassie (I know, I know) our minature collie. They would run along the top of the backyard fence, chattering and waving their busy tails at her. She would, of course, charge the fence barking like crazy, and which time they would just scamper off.

But… every dog has its day as they say.
I am out in the livingroom one afternoon when I hear just an amazing racket erupt in the backyard. It sounds like someone has set off a car alarm or something…
RRAAAWWWWWWWWK!!!
RAAAAWWWWWWKKK!!!
REEEEAAAAAAKKKKKK!!!
I run outside to find that Lassie has actually managed to catch a squirrel!! She’s done the impossible! She’s beaten the odds! She…
HAS NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH IT!

The look on Lassie’s face was just classic. Absolute stone cold fear and confusion. I don’t think she thought for even a second that she might actually manage to get hold of the beastie when she charged after it, and once she got it in her mouth and the thing started going off like a 900 decible fire engine, she just lost her mind.

She looked at me, terrified and I could clearly read her thoughts:

Oh crap!! OH CRAP!! This wasn’t supposed to happen. This CAN’T happen!! What do I do with it NOW???
I managed to get her to let go of the thing and she looked relieved more than anything else.

Hil-ar-ious.

:slight_smile:

17

One time I got home just in time to see my cat Clio in hot pursuit of a squirrel. She chased it up the advertising hoarding (billboard) at the end of the street. Of course the squirrel got all the way up while she only managed half way. And she was stuck. With a manic expression, ears flat to her head, Clio clung onto the hoarding while the squirrel chittered mocking squirrel insults at her from the top of the hoarding . Eventually she had to do that ungainly turning round, trying to climb down and leaping off thing. The squirrel made it’s escape sometime after dark. What I thought was that Clio had finally found something that ran faster than she did, climbed better than she did and, thankfully for both their sakes, she hadn’t never discovered that it could bite at least as well as she could…

18

Well, not all cats are smart about hunting. Our current dainty and fluffy Sara once cornered a mousie in the front hall. But she had no idea what to do. The rodent was hopping up & down like a cartoon critter, and Sara was just patting it ever so gently with her soft little paw. No claws, just softie paws. Eventually it darted away along the baseboard, Sara in pursuit, still patting away. I threw an old towel over the poor terrified mouse and threw it out in the yard.

We used to have another cat who was an excellent mouser. We said it was because he was a Cat Without a Clue. He was so dense, he never got bored, and would sit and stare at a spot for hours, nay, days, when he’d seen, heard or smelled a mouse there. Every once in a great while he caught one and dispatched it pronto to Mouse Heaven.

19

I chased Leo the wussy cat around the front yard this afternoon, he had a huge woodpecker in his mouth. I never did catch him. We always find dead mice, moles, bunny rabbits, birds, and squirrel parts on the front porch depending on the time of year. He has 2 large bells on his collar and still catches them.

20

HOLY SHIT!!! Those things are huge!!!

I wouldn’t want to mess with that cat…!