My girl is a little too chubby to catch anything. She doesn’t even try. Every once in a while she’ll give half-hearted chase at a bird, but really, both she and the bird knows she’ll never get close.
I’ve had two dead birds and a dead squirrel, as well as many dead lizards. The two of them once cornered a fledgling bluejay, but I caught it and put it on the fence. Where he proceeded to fly into the neighbor’s yard - with a dog waiting for it.
My mother’s cat once left quite the interesting gift in her bed for her to find later. A several pound jelly fish.
Another time we were having a cookout. The cat was usually feed something from the table when we ate, but we had a really prissy relative there that thought that was the worst thing possible so kitty wasnt getting anything that day. After awhile we could hear the cat under the table growling. Looking, he was in lion mode working on a piece of chicken. We had not cooked any chicken. Apparently he got pissed and went and got his own food
Since most of my cats have been adopted strays and ferals, we never seem to not have gifts. Today’s was most of a mole. Over the last few weeks it has been an entire nest of baby rabbits (most caught and released unharmed - damn can those little things scream), rats, mice, moles and of course, live cicadas. No birds lately - I think they’ve gotten wise. Depending on where we lived we could also get lizards, centipedes, small snakes and giant water bugs.
The most considerate of the current crop of cats, Nijel the Destroyer, is very neat about his gifts. They come beheaded, non-eviscerated, and left in empty food dishes (the cats’, not ours). I don’t know if he is sharing with us or pointing out that the dish was empty. Only once did he bring one upstairs for a midnight snack - the heads are apparently delicious and crunchy.
Good feline hunters are surprisingly capable. There’s a picture in the Wikipedia article on cats of a four-month-old feral kitten eating a full-grown cottontail. Oddly, the caption says that nearly everything is normally consumed except sometimes the hind legs, which by human meat-eating standards would seem to be the best part.
Whoa. I found that picture. I’m rereading Watership Down and I like to think that rabbits are fairly capable when they want to be, but wow. That scene where they’re in the barn and there are a couple of cats suddenly seems even scarier than it did the first time around. Even with the capable Bigwig there to see them through it.
One of my cats, Emil, is a mighty hunter of garbage cans. He has brought home a half rotted smoked herring, several whole eggs (and how he carries an egg I don’t know), sausages, baked potatoes and many other things.
The most surprising was when I went to hospital this spring. I had packed a bag with books and some clean clothes. When I opened it at the hospital I found on top of everything a dirt encrusted plastic bottle which at one time had contained schnapps. I’m quite sure I didn’t pack it, I don’t really like schnapps, so I guess Emil has sneaked it in to cheer me up.
You may have something there :D, I’ll try it on him next time I have the ingredients. He don’t like hard boiled eggs though, I have never tried feeding him scrambled eggs.
For a time we had three cats and one Belgian hare. They actually got along as well as can be expected, and the cats never cared to attack the hare, but then again we usually kept them apart. They probably didn’t consider it a prey animal because of its size. However, although the hare was considerably smaller than any of the cats in length and breadth, its weight was even less consequential. To look at, the hare was maybe half the size of a cat, but it only weighed about a quarter as much if that–in other words a hare just doesn’t have the muscle or hunting instincts of a cat. I’d think that any adult cat with normal feline equipment and musculature would be able to take down a rabbit or hare. It’s like a Morlock going after an Eloi in The Time Machine.
My dear departed Murphy used to catch and kill my bedroom slippers, then make off with them.
I was forever hunting down my footwear, but on occasion I would find one of them under the covers as I climbed into bed. Or on my pillow, along with his favorite catnip toy.
The pillow I get, but how in the world did he get them under the covers on a made bed??
Birds. Usually not a whole one. Just a wing or a head on the welcome mat. Occasionally a pile of feathers scattered by the door when he was too hungry to share. Then a partial squirrel. He’s an inside cat now.
Found the front half of a mouse out on our front lawn several weeks ago. (What *is *it with cats halving their prey?) Thought nothing of it, forgot all about it.
A few days ago, I saw something white glowing in the sunshine in the grass. I found the mouse’s skull, perfectly cleaned, every last tooth still intact. Very carefully picked it up and gave it to my mother-in-law; she (honestly!) loves these kinds of things.
Our cat Al has caught a few anoles. One memoral occasion, he had the anole’s head and shoulders in his mouth, while all four anole legs waved frantically in the air. We still laugh at The Anole Dance. Amazingly, when we rescued the lizard, it seemed utterly unharmed - every tiny rib moved perfectly as it breathed. Our cat apparently has the mouth of a golden retriever.
I went to LSU’s Vet School’s Open House while a friend of mine was a student, and one of the displays was photos, x-rays, and such of things removed from dogs (with accompanying photos of the happy recovered pups). Equal parts hilarious and horrifying.
My lilac Siamese Puppy-Cat once came home with a live bat’s head in his mouth, and the rest of the bat flapping madly outside of his mouth. I wasn’t going to go near it. Eventually he dropped it, but the poor bat had basically been choked to death.