My cat occasionally brings me displays of her hunting prowess, worms when she was young, graduating to the odd baby bird or mouse now that she’s grown. Thankfully not a real common thing, sorta gross regardless.
My son’s heading to brush his teeth for bed and remarks “Mom! Looks like Monkeyface killed a bird, there’s feathers in your bedroom!”
Sigh, ok, I gird myself appropriately with the professional kill removal tools (plastic bag around right hand, paper toweling in left) and mosey over for cleanup duty.
Yeah, turns out she hadn’t quite finished killing the bird! :eek:
The fucking bird is aflapping and claws are flying as they tumble and fight their way across the floor, ick!! In my room!!!
I totally wussed out, slammed the door shut and called a neighboring brother-in-law, shrieking like a B-movie queen. If I’da been wearing a skirt I’d have hopped onto the table just like in ye olde cartoons and went 'eek! eek!"
Why oh why do cats do this?! How can I make her stop already?
She’s trying to feed you. A cat will bring back its kill for its kittens or nursing mate. Apparently she figures you suck at hunting and she’s the only thing standing between you and starvation.
My cat occasionally leaves us live birds in the basement. She brings them in through the pet door.
And I’ll agree with Darkhold, who said that declawing a cat doesn’t mean they can’t still hunt. We recently had to put down our 20 year old cat Callie who had been declawed her whole life, and she never had a problem bring us birds, rabbits, frogs, etc. She was also a really good fighter. I saw her beat up a stray cat once. Callie got flipped over onto her back and the stray pounced on her stomach, and Callie gripped it around the neck with her front paws and clawed the crap out of its belly with her clawed back feet. So declawed cats can still hunt and fight. And climb trees. Callie never had a problem doing that either.
If you keep her in the house, you don’t need to declaw her. In fact, you don’t need to declaw her at all. I do recommend an indoor lifestyle - I won’t go into the debate, but if you really want her to stop killing things and bringing them to you - the only thing that you can do is keep her indoors.
For some reason, I found this really, really funny.
“Mommy too skinny, need food. Me bring treats.”
(Maybe I just need some sleep…)
[hijack]
Btw, is there any reason NOT to declaw a cat? In the States it seems pretty common, but when I was in Australia people looked at me like I was Satan. (When I brought up declawing, that is. Well, at least I think that was the reason…)
I don’t think it’s got to do with food, or the cats analysis of you metabolic state, more that they don’t see you out hunting birds and think you don’t know what to do. You may be the one that gives them all the food, but it’s pointless if you don’t hunt
And as was pointed out in another thread, NZ has a huge problem with cats and bird kills. Since my chaps have had their “dingle dangle” collars they have caught nothing.
I can spy on them in the early hours now too …listen for the dingle dangle
Otto has covered it pretty well. Whether it’s common or not (and I think it’s becoming less common) it’s not there’s reasons NOT to, there isn’t any reason TO declaw a cat. If you’re worried about your furniture (or whatever) and don’t want to spend the time training the animal to scratch in appropriate places, then I’d reconsider owning a cat. Or at the very least, get one from a shelter that was previously declawed rather than having it done yourself.
And Twisty’s right - cats bring you their (at times, barely alive) prey to teach you to hunt. It’s how they would teach their kittens.
My kitty brought me a beautiful chipmunk a couple of days ago… still fresh from the yard. We tried to maneuver him back outside with the squirming animal still in his mouth but halfway to the door he dropped him. My kitty tried to catch it again but my son intervened because the chipmunk was so cute. Now, Dale (the chipmunk) is living comfortable somewhere in my home. Apparently, the cats think he is a pet now and are no longer hunting him…
One of our cats occasionally brings home her prey. Usually lizards, and usually still alive.
We must be careful how we handle this. On the one hand, we don’t want her to kill the lizard in front of us, AND we dont want lizard parts in the house. OTOH, we must be careful to praise her hunting skills lest she start to sulk then go out for other game just to show us up.
I may have told this story before, But when I was growing up we had a cat who fed the dog. The poor dog was reaaaaaallllll fat. Probably well over twice her healty weight. The vet kept giving us crap about how unhealthy she was. So finally my mom started buying expensive diet dog food. But the dog just kept getting fatter. When the dog finally died the garage was constantly full of dead birds and rodents. We finally put it together that the cat had been feeding the dog several times a day for many years. The dog was using it’s instinct to gorge itself when ever there was food around, and swallowed every last bit, and I guess the cat figured that since nothing was saved for later, it’s friend needed more food.
