Very nearly the high point of my day, especially since I came back from lunch to be caught by the project lead and roped into a 4 1/2 hour telecon on production system problems.
I wasn’t home at the time, but my wife regaled me with the tale of how she (the cat, not my wife :)) chased the rodent out of the woods, across the yard, over the brook, and into my brother-in-law’s woodpile, to the excitement of his kids and his own amusement (my wife was screaming, “Catch it! Catch it! Kill it! Kill it!”, which added to his amusement.)
Finally, Patches did catch it and kill it. My wife immediately began to praise her: “Good girl!” – which she took as the cue to drop the ex-vole on the lawn and run back to the house for cat treats (she got two).
Not, I know, nearly as fascinating to the Teeming Thousands as a thread about being screwed in the butt by one’s girlfriend with a strap-on dildo, but exciting to me, nonetheless.
“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”
How big are voles? I thought a vole was like a weasel, big enough to whip a housecat. So either Patches is one bad pussycat or voles are smaller than I thought.
Actually, the first thought is more amusing. Come here Patches, put the pit bull down, come in here and get your treats! We’ve got a whole casserole dish full of mutton and cod-liver oil!
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
Voles are little bitty things, 2-3 inches long IIRC. My doorstep is littered with them on warm summer nights when my boys are out a hunting. They remind me of a cross between a mouse and a mole.
At one time I had a Siamese-Persian mix…real pretty, Siamese color pattern but white with silver face/paws/tail. She was the hunter from hell, always bringing birds and lizards home.
Anyway, she had kittens. One of them was a taupe (he looked dirty orange to me, but that’s what Mom called it) male who went after her hunting title big-time. At three months, he caught his first mouse. At three and a half months, he caught a hawk (don’t worry, he didn’t kill it, jut pounced and trapped it). He was really gonna be something.
He never grew to maturity, though; apparently, both he and his mother were felled by an area mountain lion. Knowing what they were like, though, I bet they took a piece out of that lion before they went down.
Anyway. There’s my cat story. Didn’t mean to steal your thunder. Continue.
My cat can beat your cat–about a month ago he brought a half-grown rabbit in the house. We have a “cat-window” so he can come it and out at will. One day I was sitting in the living room and this “ball” rolled across the floor to my bedroom with Hulk Hogan in hot pursuit. I thought it was a ball but in about 5 minutes I heard a squeal. I went in and found a rabbit behind the bookcase! I finally got to him and he let me pick him up and take him outside. Hulk was pretty mad. He used to bring me home voles and mouse periodically, as well as baby mockingbirds.
My cat can beat your cat!
Barncats, gotta love 'em.
At one point we had a hole im the floor of one of our outbuildings that had rats living in it. A stray cat came around and started hanging around and then particularly around that hole. In a period of two days she had killed 5 full size rats and 4 small ones. That cat was only around for a couple weeks but boy could she hunt. My guess is she moved on to greener hunting grounds.
Well, no one vole is a problem; it’s en masse that they cause difficulties.
Actually, this is a question that my wife and I are divided on, and probably always will be. I don’t actually like small rodents, but I do have a live-and-let-live attitude towards them; I probably wouldn’t care if they were skittering across the floor. (Although I do draw the line at their raiding the pantry. I once lost half a loaf to a mouse – or probably a whole bunch of mice; if it had been one mouse, I could have rolled him across the floor and out a window).
OTOH, we have several hundred feet of dry-laid stone walls here, which is like putting up rodent condos. Shortly after moving in to this house, we had a plague of rodents of Biblical proportions. To this day, they eat the green tomatoes (again, we have a difference of opinion on this; I dislike tomatoes enough that I wouldn’t care if the rodents uprooted the vines and dragged them back to their burrows).
As long as my participation is not solicited (and it isn’t), I’m content to let my cat catch, or not catch, critters as she sees fit.
“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”
Yes, despite the opinions of some people, cats are useful and throughout history have helped keep the rodent population under control (I think Washington, D.C. could benefit from some free-roaming cats, except the cats probably wouldn’t survive the two-legged predators.) I had a cat who captured & killed a couple mice at another apartment of mine - came home twice to find the poor little creature lying dead in the hall just in front of the door. I think the cat left it there as a present for me.
My mama-cat was a great hunter. One day I saw her stalking in the back yard. I looked to see what the next menu item was going to be.
It was a peacock! In our backyard. I have no idea what mama-cat would have done if she had caught it (the scene where Wile E. Coyote finally catches the Roadrunner comes to mind). Turned out a guy up the block raised pea cocks/hens, and one had gotten loose.
We have an orange(no, I don’t know what rhymes with orange) , 17 pound , neutered male cat named Clapton.
A partial list of successful kills:[ul][li]an owl[/li][li]rabbits[/li][li]an opossum[/li][li]snakes[/li][li]lizards[/li][li]rats[/li][li]mice[/li][li]shrews[/li][li]voles[/li][li]crayfish/crawdads[/li][li]a small poodle/chihuahua (sp?) crossbreed[/ul][/li]
He has also **tried to kill:**Canadian Geese(full grown, young &both at the same time) & a large turtle. The turtle was ultimately a frustrating experience for him, obviously.
Very tough cat…
YO-HO, ME HEARTIES! ALL HANDS ON DECK FOR THE MUSICAL BATTLE AT SEA!
One of my dogs (unsure of which one) caught and thoroughly masticated a mole. I was very pleased because I had been trying to trap the varmint for a month. It wreaked havoc on my lawn.
That was one big mole, too! Six inches nose to tail (I have pictures of the miserable little beast if anybody wants to see them).
Our two are indoor cats so they don’t get to do any big game hunting, but they are extremely effective mousers. Now that the weather’s getting cooler, I can count on them to keep us rodent-free. Every once in a while, I find little bits of mouse guts on a carpet. I don’t know enough about mouse innards to know what it is they don’t like, but they consume almost everything.
When we lived in San Diego, there always seemed to be lizard parts behind the furniture.
Some people know a lot more when you tell them something than when you ask them something.
We used to have a big, fluffy black cat named Archie–colored like Socks is. He once lay for hours at a time looking at a hole in the foundation of our house (in Hermosa Beach, CA; urbanized L. A. area), and we thought he was waiting for a mouse. Well, he was. And a cousin was doing some cleaning up around the house; she said that near the hole Archie was waiting by, she found a cache of mouse skeletons! That cat was a terrific mouser.
Please congratulate Patches, Akat, on her achievement for me. I think you should embroider a little vole on her scratching post for each kill. There’s nothing like having the Discovery Channel live in one’s backyard for a spell.
Now I get to tell my cat story. About 10 years ago, I lived on the very upper east side (94th St.). A construction project next door had flushed out every mouse and rat in the area. Since we were on the first floor and in the basement (and had a small backyard), we had rodent commandos raiding our kitchen on a regular basis. Traps, poison, steel wool, nothing worked.
As it happened, the mother of a close friend was one of those people with about 17 cats. So she was kind enough to lend me two kittens (Tom and Alex). Those little critters hated all creatures. Every morning for two months, I’d come upstairs to find each had got me a little present during the night. They were so proud, playing with their by now dead prey. I’d send them outside when I got home from work, and they’d hunt down some more. They finally got so spoiled that they refused to eat prepared cat food. “I don’t think so, manhattan, that meat has been dead for weeks. We’re going out for the fresh stuff.”
When they had exhausted the local supply, the cats retired to a farm in Maryland, where they are doubtless happily continuing their murderous ways.
