Dead mice, dead birds, even a dead rabbit. They drag them to you (well, not the rabbit), and won’t start eating until you’ve acknowledged them. Are they offering first right of refusal? Hoping for praise? Showing you that they’re earning their keep?
They bring you kills because you’re the Big Cat of the pride, and they want to gift you with the thing kitties love most: NOMS!
Have you noticed that they usually watch to see what you’re going to do with it?
mangeorge
The reason for this behavior is not known for sure. But some animal behaviorists believe it may be that, although the your cat sees you in most respects as dominant and superior over them, he or she nevertheless recognizes your pathetic inadequacy as a hunter, and is trying to help you out,
or in a similarly vein he may be simply be offering due obeisance to your dominant awesomeness without any comment on your ability to pounce or bite the heads off of small animals.
Of course, based on own my length experience with cats, I question fundamentally this part right here:
and also what I said a little bit before that:
Because AFAI concerned, the species that has its food brought to it fresh, and fetched away in little plastic bags when they’re – er – done using it, is the species that has won. 
Ditto the animal that, fifteen seconds after I have given him fresh water and ice cubes (long story, another time) and fresh kibble, comes over to my desk and gives me a little “Yip!”, because I didn’t put down the wet food as well.
Pictures promised!
My cat loved water and ice cubes. One time I had crushed ice so I gave him that. For at least a week after that, when I’d give him cubes, he’d look at it and give me a look like “what the hell is this?”
Same reason for everything cats do : evil. The cat brings you the mouse, or bird, or whatever, looks at you, and snaps the poor critter’s neck. The message is clear : “I could do the same to you if I wanted…no one would *ever *know.”
My own cats at home bring the li’l kill right in, for appreciation, me-rowring for appreciation. Ahhhh, ummm, right, good kitty, yecccchhh, thanks.
But, our work cat, Tika, has a rather opposite life, being a garden work cat. Her life is fine as she knows it. Her Peeps are there all day, go home at 5, and she’s alone for the night, Peeps all back for the next day.
So, her "presentation " of kill is really different than kitties I’ve had at home. In the morning, we find select pieces of critters placed under the desks of her favorite folks. She doesn’t place them under any old desk, but, really, her faves. So, something is going on there with selection, and, it’s not that the person is there at the time: they won’t be there until hours later. She knows the proper desk, though.
My favorite example is when she left the back half of a young rabbit on the work snack table. She had to drag the bunny up there, had never left an offering there before, and, to boot, laid it out on a paper plate left there, like it was a nice meal. Did she know it was the snack table? I dunno, but she was wanting attention for it the next day.
She’s got a time delay in her life, but definitely wants to be acknowledged for her good cat work.
I have woke up more than once with a dead mouse a few inches from my nose. He would be sitting there looking at me lovingly and purring lika a buzzsaw.
He never did figure out why I’d go throw it into the toilet. But he did seem to get a kick out of watching it go down.
Evil? Nah. Manipulative? Of course.
All kidding aside, in many respects pet cats clearly take on the rule of a kitten (with the human as their Mommy): purring, kneading, crying for food, and so forth. In this case, though, the cat is instead exhibiting a Mommy-like, dominant behavior, and the human is being put in the role of kitten: Mommy has brought home dinner. If the prey is still alive, Mommy is trying to teach her (large, ungainly, funny looking) kitten how to hunt.
Dogs come from social animals (wolves) so there’s a sort of natural set of roles the dog and human can be put into–the human is the Alpha of the Pack. Since the wild ancestors of domesticated cats were solitary hunters, rather than just taking over a ready-made set of social roles, pet cats probably wind up with an assortment of re-purposed instincts and behaviors in relating to their humans; the cat (even as an adult) may sometimes act as a kitten, but sometimes the cat winds up acting as the mother cat instead–the same cat may display either behavior depending on what’s going on. (Adult domesticated cats also act in more kittenish ways towards each other with respect to their wild ancestors, in that they will–usually, anyway–put up with other adult cats in much closer proximity than undomesticated wildcats would, “hanging out” or even playing with other adults, acting like a litter of kittens on into adulthood. Even feral domesticated cats will associate in loose colonies in a way pure wildcats don’t.)
I had a cat and she’d bring me animals, but none of them were dead. I don’t think her mother ever taught her how to kill anything. So she’d bring them back alive. If you weren’t careful, you’d let her in and you’d see her spit something and the next thing you know a bird was flying around your house. Or you had a mole or a baby rabbit in the living room running around
My family once had a cat (appropriately named Uggo) whom we tried to put on a diet. The diet ended when my parents were woken at the crack of dawn by the following sounds:
peep peep peep
crunch crunch crunch
noisy, satisfied grooming
So in at least one case, it was to make a point. This cat also brought home a dead possum once… perhaps her name should have been Greebo.
Others brought home live animals as toys or pets, some of which didn’t survive the ordeal, but these weren’t exactly laid at our feet. Only one cat actually delivered gifts, and oddly, she was the one who was least bonded to anyone. Perhaps because she had been semi-feral when I adopted her, and was trying to contribute to the communal food supply? Our other cats were all shelter kittens, and all accepted the never-empty foodbowl as the natural order of things. They rarely ate any of what they caught, so they may not even have connected prey with food.
Our cat got out for a while, then when she came back, she brought a dead mouse. She was relatively new to us then, so I considered it a “hey, you’re my peeps; I brought you a present - thanks for letting me have my little adventure”
Jesus, I just posted a kitty pic. My cred’s been shred.
Your cred’s fine with me, AA. That’s one fine looking kitty. 
Thanks for the reassurance, mangeorge. She really is pretty; the picture doesn’t quite capture the variation in color in her coat, though. We adopted her, so we’re not sure, but I think she’s a Maine Coon, or at least partially one.
We never quite figured out how, but one of our cats (Harlequin, a perfect split-faced orange and black calico) managed to extract the Russian dwarf hamster (Mulan – don’t ask, our daughter named it) from its cage – twice. On both occasions we caught Harley sauntering through the living room as if nothing unusual were happening, carrying the shivering little rodent by the scruff. Upon sensing disapproval from her minions, Harley dropped the hamster and turned her head in a distinctive “You just don’t appreciate ANYTHING I do for you?” pose.
The first time this happened, the hamster failed to survive the night. Since a non-professional examination had failed to turn up any injuries, we figured its heart had given out from the fright. We were able to procure a nearly identical litter mate to take its place, so Kizarvexilla never found out. Mulan II proved to be a bit hardier, and survived its own encounter with Harley the Huntress.
Yeah, cats are weird that way. Of the three cats who lived with my mom some years ago, the youngest somehow got it into her head that the oldest was her kitten. This led to a very weird relationship, but a mutually-satisfactory one to all parties involved: Baby groomed and fawned over Spunky, because she thought that Spunky was her kitten, and Spunky gracefully accepted the attention and grooming because it was her just due as Empress of All Existence.
I wonder if this behavior is advantageous (and therefore has been selected for) in domestic cats. While a cat’s main job in developed countries is to look cute and fuzzy, in agricultural areas, cats are valued as mousers. I suspect those individuals considered by humans to be the best mousers might be better tolerated, given more breeding opportunities, etc. And cats that – for whatever original reason – have a tendency to display their kills to humans are going to be considered better mousers than cats that kill and eat in privacy, even if the actual mouse killings are equal.
I think this pretty much nails it. Most cats tend to think of the household humans as their children. The cat is merely trying to properly care for you by bringing you some fresh kill, or desiring to teach you how to hunt properly.
I think way too much is made of behaviors being genetically advantageous in both wild and domestic animals. I believe many behaviors exist simply because the animals enjoy them. That would include sharing. Imo.
Dominant or not, though, the point holds: to them, we are kitties too.