You keep on giving them sashimi, there goes any incentive to turn into a fierce, rat-killing machine. They may start hunting fish, however.
Some years ago we had a very fierce, 10-lb tomcat, indoor/outdoor and he killed mice, moles, birds, and once brought a baby rabbit (still alive) into the house through the cat door. The poor thing was squeeking like crazy, until my wife, who was freaking out, captured it and turned it lose back in the shrubs.
He was named Jaws, as he never lapped our hands, but would bite fingers, even when we were petting him. When friends asked why that name, we told them to go ahead and try to pet him. And, he did kill and bring back two rats, pretty good sized.
As has been noted, some cats are hunters, other are wusses. Even the latter can, upon proper provication, kill. Whether yours would tangle with a rat is doubtful, but who knows.
As the well-known saying has it, '“Cats is weird.”
My dad had an outdoor cat that was fed dry food. He moved to a place kind of out in the country. It had a mole problem, so he started giving the cat wet food whenever it caught a mole or a mouse. No reward for a bird or lizard.
The cat learned. Rewards work, if you pick the right reward.
Did the cat get the food right away after it brought in the prey? I heard that, to train a cat, you need to reward them right away after a desired behavior, otherwise they don’t make the connection.
He’d bring the body to the front door, lay it on the mat, and meow. Dad would check it and, if it met specs, go get the can. Sometimes Dad wouldn’t be home, or would be out of earshot, and then the reward would be delayed.
I’m not sure how the original training went. By the time I saw it, the pattern was well established. I suspect that Patrick wanted to show off the new bounty and Dad used the opportunity.
You can use classic behaviorism. In my case, I just waited until I got the desired result, gave the treat, and then the cat would go through a bunch of random actions until the treat was given again, etc.
Only one time did we ever have rats on the farm when I was a kid. The barn cats seemed to take it as a personal affront, and killed the lot of them within a week. They kept the ground squirrel population in the pastures in check, too.
I’m thinking folks here are way underestimating housecats. Or overestimating rats. Cats can and do kill rats easily. Just as they kill squirrels of similar size, with equally sharp teeth, agility and a will to fight. I’ve seen housecats bring home jackrabbits. Now, a jackrabbit weighs the same as an average adult cat (not one tenth like a rat), and will put up a real fight; male jackrabbits occasionally kill each other over mating rights.
ETA: regarding the OP: certainly not all cats will go after rats, regardless of their physical ability to do so.
Adding to the annecdotes. My parents have a Burmese, Ruby. She is about 2.5 kilograms, and when younger regularly killed rats that came from the neighbour’s junkheap of a garden. My father made an interesting observation. She would bring back live mice, and do the usual playing about with them in the house (much to my mother’s distress.) But rats always came back minus their heads. It was pretty clear that there was no playing with a rat. It was sport to catch and kill it (she never ate the body) but a rat was too nasty to actually play with. Her much larger brother was, however, a total wuss. I think he once caught a mouse.
Age is also an issue on cat aggresivness. My parents cat is about 11 now. Years ago he would reguarly catch mice, sparrows, squirrels etc. Now, a squirrels taken to coming into their kitchen to be given a biscuit (just in the door, not clambering over the work surfaces) and he is utterly disinterested. Anything like that now he is
Yeah whatever, this basket is very comfortable and i’m not getting out of it until it’s dinnertime.
Squirrel comes within a foot of him and he won’t even twitch.
In North America the vast majority of rats are Brown (Norweigan), or Black (Ship), both orginating in Europe. There are also various small regional American ‘rats’ (none of which are in the genus rattus). None exceed 2 lbs and most are around the 1/2 lb - 1 lb mark. Your average cat (7-12 lbs) should have no problem dispatching one. However cats vary in their timidity and some will only kill very small prey…
Brown or black rats of unsual size in the US are definately a myth, although there are any number of larger rat-like animals that could be mistaken for one.
fuzzypickles pic could be of a Gambian pouched rat which are gaining popularity as a pet in the US.
Our cat once killed a skunk. A big tom, he had disappeared for several days and came back smelling pretty rank. That was in the winter. When my father went to retrieve the screens from the garage (they were on a shelf above the car) he found the dessicated and nearly oderless carcass of a skunk. Putting two and two together we concluded that the cat had dispatched the skunk and then gone off to hide for a couple days. He also regularly caught birds and hid them in the same place among the storm windows. Never underestimate the killing ability of a feline.
