I woke this morning to find my cat proudly sitting behind a dead bird. There were feathers everywhere. What I found fascinating was that my cat didn’t eat the bird. She seemed to pluck off some of the feathers, but otherwise, the bird was left intact.
Why didn’t she eat the bird? Aren’t cats supposed to eat birds? Or do they just like playing with them?
A cat killing a bird is like a person writing to others. Not eating the bird is as natural as not getting paid to write.
If she had eaten the bird, she wouldn’t have anything to show off to you.
Are you sure she wasn’t presenting it to you?
Sounds reasonable to me. Every cat we ever had, when they caught a bird or a mouse, wouldn’t eat it, but did either parade around the house with it, or would stand by it, head high in the air, after dropping it at our feet.
My cat often eats the things it catches. Not always, though. But now that he’s older, he doesn’t seem to leave them at the door as often – just leaves them lying around wherever. One time we found a mouse organ sitting by itself in the middle of the dining room floor – never found the rest of the mouse.
Do you feed your cat? Chances are, if you didn’t, she would have eaten the bird. Perhaps she was giving it to you, so you could grind it up and put it in little cans, for future meals.
And just be glad she doesn’t drop almost-dead little mice into your shoes, as a gift. Believe me, after the first horrible experience, I learned to always check my shoes before putting them on.
Your cat isn’t hungry. The only creatures who eat when they’re not hungry are humans and dogs. And who would want to see a cat decend to that level?
But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t still like killing things. Either because she’s a sadistic little minion of Satan in a fur suit. Or becauses she’s a caring maternal type who’s trying to provide for her people who can apparently open cans but would starve to death if they had to hunt down a chipmunk. In all probabilty, both.
My cat killed a bird
My cat killed a bird
Hi-ho-the-dairy-0
My cat killed a bird
Sorry, had to get that out of my system.
Why do you allow your cat outdoors? Because you know, there are some birds* that will cheerfully return the favor, along with coyotes and trucks.
*The Great Horned Owl is one.
If you want your cat to quit killing birds, just offer him a pretty collar with a bell on it.
(millions of birds are being killed by cats every year 
)
welcome to the world of mother nature. I have yet to see a can opener in my woods, but we do have a population of feral cats [which we live trap and get shots and neuter. Asshats dump cats on the farm all the time]
Sorry. My cat had a collar with a bell, a leash, and no front claws, and still managed to kill the occasional bird. (She’d have killed more if we did’t usually attempt to separate her from the bird as soon as we realized she’d attacked a bird.)
It was a present to you - a high honor in the cat world, which I suspect that she has killed many birds in the past, which she ate on her own. The temptation of the hunt is a very strong urge in cats, and I suspect it is sort of how our urge to have sex can be, and is part of the natural order of thing.
Quite right, as regards the tendency of cats to hunt & kill. By contrast, the human tendency to spread cats far and wide is not part of the natural order of things, and indeed is a disaster for many bird species, especially those that nest on & near the ground.
Cat owners do well to keep their pets indoors.
another good arguement for keeping the cats indoors, as much as the damage they can cause to indigenous avian and rodent population, is all the nasty things that can happen to the cat.
“Fish gotta swim
And birds gotta fly
Cats gotta kill
Every little thing that goes by…”
Ain’t that the truth! http://www.currykerlinger.com/birds.htm
True. But hundreds of millions of birds are NOT being killed by cats every year. Domestic cats won’t cause the extinction of any bird species. And it’s not like they’re killing the endangered species in particular. Most bird species are pretty adept at not getting wiped out; the domestic house cat is the least of their worries.
My cat just caught a rat. In the house. If he’d had a bell on him, he might not have caught the thing.
So, we might as well say: “Millions of rats are being killed by cats every year.” What a shame. :(*
*Check out the film “Winged Migration,” if you haven’t already.
The downside for us (when we had outside cats) is that it keeps the birds from hanging around in our yard. I’m hoping some of the prettier ones will come by again now that Large has moved into the house permanently.
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/karlen1956/album/576460762320924687/photo/294928803221098887/5
You wouldn’t think such a big cat could move fast enough to catch a bird, but he does!