several years ago we had an influx (to put it gently) of mice in the kitchen. every drawer, every open space, was visited, and I spent every morning cleaning out every drawer of their calling cards. brrr.
I have two cats.
charlie is big and fluffy and his idea of hunting is to catch a mouse and lick it to death. He thinks they are all squeaky toys and when they no longer squeak he abandons them. Toby is lithe and quick and loves nothing more than mouse in the morning. I had noticed at the time that his summer quarters in the front bedroom were regularly dotted with mouse carcasses (carcassi?). Sure enough during the early winter he began catching a mouse a night, and depositing the leftovers (to be polite) on my husband's side of the bed. Gooood kitty. We kept track, and by the end of the winter he had taken out 21 mice. At least. I found the mouse nest in the closet (don't ask) and closed up the huge holes in the same closet with cement-in-a-sock. The mouse invasion stopped for several years.
Charlie and Toby are now senior cats, and Toby is getting to look more like a toast rack with fur, so I moved his bedding into the dining room, near the stove, and his food, and his litter box. he is now no longer terrified of me, just a bit wary. And the mice have returned. I've taken to putting down serious mouse traps and have bagged at least ten so far. Expensive, but effective. This morning I came down stairs and into the dining room to my laptop, set up on the diningroom table. When I looked down I saw, to my delight, a half mouse, directly where my foot would be when I sat down.
I am assuming that Toby is thanking me for the new place to sleep, and the new food, and this is his way of giving back. And I am honored. =)
Well, half a mouse is better than none, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteIt's a start. He may even be saving up the other half for tomorrow. Why waste a perfectly good mouse half...
ReplyDeletethe animator maintains that cats leaving dead things where they know we will find them is an act of caring, but i am convinced that there is a measure of malice involved. to this day, more than fifteen years later, i still have to turn over my shoes and give them a light tap before putting them on... ever since his ridiculous cat decided to show me some "love" by leaving a dead mouse in one.
ReplyDeleteFully half the cats I've had over time have had self-imposed "jobs' or talents--two or three were greeter cats, one was a guy cat, if you opened the hood of the car he'd be right there, inspecting the engine, making sure the plugs and points were working...toby is the first serious mouser we've ever had, and he doesnt mess around. I passed him on the stairs one night as he was coming up with a seriously dead mouse in his mouth--he had a look of triumph, and he was growling...gooood kitty...
ReplyDeleteBut I agree, always best to check the shoes. nothing quite like morning mouse in your shoes.
One of my female cats, scooter, decided I was one of her big/dumbass kittens, and one day decided to teach me to hunt. I came home to find a not quite dead snake in the kitchen, and no Scooter in sight. aha, I thought. Training has begun. So I took the poor thing out and let it do what it had to do out there, and when I came back there was Scooter looking smug and matronly, quite pleased with me for killing my prey. Mercifully she didn't insist on more.