Cats bringing in Mice + Birds HELP!!

Littlemadam83

Crikey, some of your stories are hilariously horrifying!!

I saw this subject on another forum years ago, and although it is horrendous, we just need to be greatful our little ones are normal and doing what they have been born to do - survive (well, instinct is hard to overcome!)

Bless them, I hate it when my cat brings birds/mice in, but she's never going to change!!!

kjmtidea

My two cats are nearly 11 months old and they have brought quite a few things home in the past few months! It started with leaves and feathers, then it was mice and frogs, oh and worms! They never kill them though, they just play with them for a bit and then lose interest - then it's down to us to rearrange the kitchen to try and find a tiny mouse lol.

It is the frogs that I can't cope with, just something about them that gives me the creeps. The first thing I do when I get out of bed in the morning is put my shoes on, just in case!

Fire_Fox

I don't have presents from Noah as he is indoor only: previous cats have brought blackbirds, doves, a goldfinch, field mice, voles, grasshoppers and moths. It is sad if they kill something but unfortunately hunting is just as much a part of cat ownership as cleaning the cat litter tray and furballs ... :eek:

I think they are sometimes presents - definitely one of our previous cats used to announce herself when she came home (a strangled mouth full mew :rotfl:) and once she laid a dead rodent neatly next to a toy mouse we had just purchased. Can be quite funny when they drop something and it flies off, cue very confused cat!!

There are child-proof devices that can be used to 'lock' internal doors that cats can open, maybe you could investigate that to keep the cats out of the areas you don't want dead things? Definitely buy a humane trap for catching escapee mice.

Deep_In_Debt

When I first had my cats, I had one of those flashy, magnetic cat flap thingys and the cats had to wear magnets when they had their collars.

They used to bring home all sorts of stuff...spoons, bottle tops and various magnetic items which would be attached the magnets on their collars...the problems they had trying to get through the flap with a spoon attached was quite comical! At least I never had to buy any cutlery!

I thought I'd send the cats through other people's cat flaps to see if the magnets would get some gold jewellery...cat burglars!

They broke the cat flap years ago and it works normally now and they don't have collars any more so no chance of any valuables coming my way...just anything slimey, furry or feathery!

crackerberry

During one such "live furry gift" encounter four years ago this is an email I sent to a friend on the night in question.

FW: Just another quiet weekend ....‏ 13 November 2006 04:37:31


…. Of the usual kind that has a habit of occuring only when you think things can't get any worse… as proof that you're wrong!

On full alert at silly o'clock for reasons I shall elaborate further upon below, and with nothing better to do, I thought I'd share some of it with you. I'll relate the night's events whilst one eye focuses on this task in hand and the other, complete with nervous tic, revolves like a spinning top as it performs per second surveillance on any suspicious activities within a fifteen foot radius of my current location of my sofa.

The evening started well, a peaceful and relaxing Sunday night watching the usual **** on TV ahead.... until, shortly after seven all hell let loose when my cat shot in through the living room window, immediately shot back out of the same window... but not before dumping a mouse around the size of a small Jack Russell on the carpet under the window. Watching with the utmost horror as this thing legged it to a spot in the corner behind the TV cabinet I determined that unfortunately it was probably still alive.

And eight hours later the brown furry little swine is still alive. Instead of it being in a location of my choosing by now, ie inside my cat, its current location is unknown.

My living room is in chaos, the furniture is on stilts or at least perched upon Jilly Cooper novels, every mouse size nook and cranny blocked with sellotape and a magimop rests by my side as a means of defence. The cats grew bored hours ago and have gone upstairs to bed and the neighbour's cat I enlisted as back up has ate itself sick (and again, not on "mouse") and followed suit.

So here I sit, alone and knackered… but no way am I retiring with the prospect of waking to find Turbo-mouse on the pillow adjacent to mine! Seriously, this thing is gigantic - I've seen smaller Shetland ponies.

Whilst rearranging the furniture I and the three cats had all arrived at the same conclusion ie that it was by now hiding inside the fireplace or rather the electric fire in the fireplace. After all four of us, in equal shifts, spent a couple of hours glaring into every orifice the fireplace had... and attempts to roast it to death by switching said fire on at full blast had failed there was nothing else for it but to take the decision to remove the fire and its furry resident to the other side of my front door....which I did..and with great difficulty considering it weighs a ton. More than that infact, with the pony sized mouse still inside it.

So here I am by this point, out in the street just after midnight, heaving and dragging my fireplace out of the front door and on to my path, surrounded by cats of every shape and colour, full length fleecy dressing gown (with leopard skin trim) flapping in the wind….. .when along comes a member of the local constabulary .

Or rather, along comes a member of the local constabulary belting up my quiet, usually desirable, usually deserted street...in hot pursuit of a member of the local criminal fraternity! Finally, right infront of and a matter of feet from my front door, PC Plod makes a final surge for "the finish line" , launches himself skyward and with a rugby tackle wasted outside of a rugby pitch brought the local member of the criminal fraternity down to the ground.

Momentarily distracted from my heaving, my dressing gown still flapping, a dozen cats still at my feet, and having assumed an expression akin to that of a stunned parrot...mouth open in a perfect O ...I paused to watch this new development. As the two aforementioned continued to grapple and writhe on the ground together and still mere feet away I eventually decided they must have their reasons so recommenced assisting my fireplace and its lodger to their intended new abode... my garage next door.

By this point both the local member of the constabulary and the local member of the criminal fraternity had themselves been distracted from their disagreement on my path... staggering to their feet in mutual contemplative silence to stare, equally stunned parrot like, as I inched my fireplace towards the garage door....half a dozen cats lining my route, the other half by now fighting on the tarmac. I did consider using the lull in their fisticuffs to ask if they could help me shove but decided against it when the yobbo, quite obviously bored by then, decided to feign collapse... and you could say he kind of had his hands full anyway ...and problems of his own...because in retaliation, with helmet askew, PC Plod handcuffed him and immediately proceeded incoherently to read him his rights!

His jibberish however fell on deaf ears because by this point the local member of the criminal fraternity had decided to feign an epilectic fit. Fireplace and mouse now in my garage, and with the flapping dressing gown by now threatening to take off on its own flight path, I decided to remove myself and all my furry feline observers back inside the house before one of them, upon noticing the yobbo still in full "fit" mode, decided to relieve him of his lolling tongue!

As I did so up pulls a police car, sirens blaring ..lights blazing...the whole shebang infact.. and out jumps half a dozen coppers... each grabbing a leg or an arm (or a tongue…) they hauled the yobbo inside then immediately off they scarpered.

So that was that. Except I was wrong about the fireplace. Or at least I hope I was wrong and Turbo-mouse isn't infact Turbo-MICE, because after all that all evidence is still pointing to the rotten little brown furry git still being in all too close proximity!

Its now 430am...I am utterly exhausted and... and... these things sleep during the day don't they??? Which means I only have a few hours to locate and catch the thing before sun's up...so I'm off for a poke about with the magimop yet again :-(

Sammy_Girl

Oh Crackerberry, what a great story! So what happened?? Did you find it?

Sorry OP, I'm no help whatsoever. I don't have cats, but do have a dog who has taken to bringing in mouldy food and bones he has found outside! Granted, not as awful as creatures :eek:

Littlemadam83

That was a very entertaining read, I wish I could write like that with such a descriptive and enthralling manner!

I cannot believe two days ago I posted about how this was their natural instinct. I am a complete tit! I have a day off today to pack for wedding and honeymoon for my bloody pet to bring in a dead bird this morning, it was sad, but manageable. TO my so called cat bringing in a bloody slow worm!! It looks like a snake!

Had to get other half home from work as I did not know what it was and thought it might bite me or eat me or something, and now it has gone missing! OH turned everywhere upside down, and I am sitting here with a stick, not that it will do any good. I cannot believe this has happened! Someone is having a right laugh at me!

maggied_2

Dead rabbit on the bed :eek::eek::eek: that's horrific!!!

Ours (3 @ 13 months) have been bringing in some massive frogs but they have no idea what to do with them. Apart from one they've all survived and we've had many an 'entertaining' moment chasing them while they hop around the house while trying to hold the cats back as they indignantly try to reclaim their catch - I have to say I didn't know cats could growl until we got the little critters!

The littlest one brought in a dead blackbird the other week and dumped it at my feet in my office while I was on the phone to a customer - ugh!!!!! No baby birds which I was expecting although have had a couple of smashed eggs which I've scooped out without looking at the contents...and there's quite often blood on the (fortunately wooden) hall floor in the morning but no corresponding wild life.

Roll on autumn and big piles of wet leaves - infinitely preferable!

crackerberry

Sammy_Girl wrote: »

Oh Crackerberry, what a great story! So what happened?? Did you find it?

Sorry OP, I'm no help whatsoever. I don't have cats, but do have a dog who has taken to bringing in mouldy food and bones he has found outside! Granted, not as awful as creatures :eek:

It must have stayed inside the fire as I dragged it into the garage. The fire has remained in the garage ever since. Despite my dad's reassurances that it is definitely "mouse-free" my aversion to it has not yet waned.

crackerberry

The only thing my cat is guaranteed to give respect to is a hedgehog. Many a night I used to watch a hedgehog merrily making its leisurely way around my garden...with my cat and the neighbours cat sitting nearby, neither of them taking one iota of notice of it. Obviously they had both already well learned by then what not to mess with.