Cats and 'presents'

Dogs, Cats, Fish, Parrots, Horses, ALL Domestic Pets
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Willow
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Cats and 'presents'

Post by Willow »

Our delightful puddy cats bring us presents )c(
Yesterday it was a huge rat, dumped on the kitchen floor (still trying to figure out how cat and rat got through the cat flap)
Tigger supermum has phases of bringing us mice, not just catching mice and bringing them in but actually insisting that we accept the present.. The other week I was baking and had the work surface, and hands full of flour etc etc.. Tigger put a dead mouse at my feet, when I ignored her, she picked it up, jumped onto the work surface and proudly dropped it onto the floured board. :shock: :shock: What are you supposed to do? shout? she was s proud of herself and being about as nice and 'giving' as a cat can be confused>
Needless to say I go through an awfull lot of disinfectant antibacterial sooper clean scrubadub stuff!!!
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Post by vyxxn »

I've heard about cats doing this - ours don't they hiss and growl then look really grumpy when you take it off them :-D
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Babycakes
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Post by Babycakes »

My mum's cats bring presents regularly. Frank once brought me a huge rook, which he plucked, dismembered and then squidged up aganist the patio doors for me to see because I was trying to ignore him sile} They also have a habit of decapitating their presents. When I was unemployed I spent a whole summer removing headless rats from their garden - Frank kept presenting them proudly to my dad who is completely rat-phobic, so he'd be on the phone to me begging to be rescued.
On the whole I think I am glad I have a dog who does not bring me gory presents - although she has developed a habit of rolling in smelly stuff then jumping all over me....
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Post by bluebell »

Our Monty loves old horse manure and dead ducks to roll in! sile}
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saint-spoon
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Post by saint-spoon »

It’s interesting that a website full of animal lovers will speak so openly and fondly of animal deaths. You may refer to it as a present but in reality it is a dead animal killed for fun buy your pet.
According to BBC wildlife magazine over 400,000,000 animals die each year at the paws of the domestic cat. That’s a lot of songbirds that will never sing again and a lot of fluffy little critters that’ll never fulfil there part in the natural world.

I’m not anti cats but wondered how many animal lovers have ever stopped to consider the reality of cat ownership.
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I have kept cats which were lovely before but do not now because they make me sneeze.
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echelon
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Post by echelon »

My eldest cat used to bring us live mice in the middle of the night!!! She'd bring them up into the attic then watch me and my husband scurrying around trying to rescue it!!!!!! What a sense of humour huh? 3am down on our hands and knees chasing some terrified furry!!!!!!

My other cat - who was sadly killed on the road - used to catch dozens of mice and eat them in the house. We'd get up to giblets, heads and tails on the lounge carpet every morning and he'd always leave the liver as well - my husband stood on one such item one morning whilst rushing to answer the phone......in bare feet!!!!!!!!!!!! YUCK!!!!!!!!!!
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Willow
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Post by Willow »

saint-spoon wrote:It’s interesting that a website full of animal lovers will speak so openly and fondly of animal deaths. You may refer to it as a present but in reality it is a dead animal killed for fun buy your pet.
According to BBC wildlife magazine over 400,000,000 animals die each year at the paws of the domestic cat. That’s a lot of songbirds that will never sing again and a lot of fluffy little critters that’ll never fulfil there part in the natural world.

I’m not anti cats but wondered how many animal lovers have ever stopped to consider the reality of cat ownership.
P.s.
I have kept cats which were lovely before but do not now because they make me sneeze.


Saint spoon, I can absolutely assure you that I, and I doubt if anyone else on this forum would speak fondly of animal deaths. We have cats, I wont have them de clawed, I wont make them wear collars with bells... They are predators as you very rightly pointed out so there is not a lot we can do about the fact that they catch wildlife. I dont certainly 'like' it.. I dont have a bird table and dont scatter bird food for that reason. If the rat we found on the kitchen floor had still been alive I would have done my utmost to help it exactly as we did for the shrew..
When I spoke about the 'presents' I was purely talking about the way our cats behave towards us, not rejoicing in the fact that they kill..
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Post by Chicken on the Hill »

It's been a very rare occaision that I've discovered a catch which hasnt been eaten. I think that the mice I've found have got away, then died of fright. I usually find them when they start to decompose and smell. Tomcat, now deceased, used to catch pigeons, 2 or 3 a day. I was convinced there was an intuder, but it turned out to be a broken winged pigeon behind the washing machine. He'd bring them in live for eating later. :shock:
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Post by untouchable »

One of the houses where I used to clean had two cats, one old one and a young female.

One day, I put the key into the backdoor, started to open the door, felt a bit of resistance, so pushed a bit harder, looking down as I did so.

I really wish I hadn't because all I saw was a smear of blood, and as I stepped round the door, I saw the remains of a baby rabbit.

There was bunny fluff all over the downstairs of the house where she must have been playing with it, and rabbit poo everywhere.

I honestly thought I was going to see my breakfast again that day as I tried to clear the kitchen floor up

*insert very sick looking smiley here*
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Babycakes
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Post by Babycakes »

When I say Frank brings "presents" I refer more to the spirit in which they are given rather than recieved.
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Post by bluebell »

As far as wasteful deaths I think the creature that has the highest tally on that score is the human being.

Not only has he gone on to hunt and wipe out complete species of creatures, he has endeavoured over many, thousands of years to wipe out his own kind.
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Post by vyxxn »

You're right Saint Spoon. I was never happy about what cats get up to and they do kill un neccessarily ( I hesitate to say for fun as I dont think thats true ) but as pets and being well fed they still have the hunter instinct and reactions but dont really need the kill for food. Domestic cats account for 50 million dead birds every year in Britain - If they preyed on humans it would take just over a year to eliminate us !!!!!
I only found this out this year and our cats were straight off to the vets to be speyed - ( apart from one who legged it, and has just had 3 kittens, but she wont get away again )I also put bells on them but they dont really work. I have a RSPB sonic cat repellant in the garden to stop them getting near the wildlife pond and bird feeders - but even this has limited success. The most effective wildlife protection was discovered by Tiggs when she lost an eye !!! - hunters need 2 eyes to judge speed and distance correctly :razz:
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Post by manda »

I have to be honest I don't like it when my cat brings in birds (fotunately not many)but I don't feel any sadness at the demise of the mice I'm afraid...before Frankie turned up we were over run with them and they very irritating when they ran around insdie the walls at night! The rat she caught last week and laid at my feet, whilst not being a present I would have chosen had I been given the option, I preferred to a live one running around.

I didn't want a cat but she moved in and I'm glad to say that I like having her about now. She has only been approachable since she had her babies but now they will all be speyed / whatever so no more babies...and I'm keeping them all so hopefully they will keep the mice down even more and the birds will keep out of the way.
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saint-spoon
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Post by saint-spoon »

vyxxn wrote: they do kill un neccessarily ( I hesitate to say for fun as I dont think thats true ) but as pets and being well fed they still have the hunter instinct and reactions but dont really need the kill for food. The most effective wildlife protection was discovered by Tiggs when she lost an eye !!! - hunters need 2 eyes to judge speed and distance correctly :razz:


Probably closer the truth about the random killing. By feeding our own private army of effective predators we have again biased the game against wildlife. The cat no longer requires to hunt in order to feed and therefore is not reliant on the availability of food for survival. By hunting it is merely feeding the primal instinct to hunt which is only natural; unfortunately as the predator population is no longer dependant on the availability of prey the numbers have vastly exceeded what could have survived naturally. The result is an unnatural density of predators which is bad news for the 450,000,000 small mammals and song birds that die each year because of our pets.

Poor Tiggs by the way.

Looks like I have put the cat amongst the pigeons with this one.
Good point Bluebell, we have had a profound and adverse effect on the living world around us; the keeping of pet cats is but a singular facet from the greater problem, a lone skiff in an armada of destructive foibles.
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