Does your cat hunt - and how do you deal with it?

I know some people keep their cat as a purely indoors pet and so those should (hopefully) not be presented with the chance to hunt anything other than an occasional spider, but what about the cats that go outside?

Obviously hunting is a totally natural drive in cats and if they see possible prey they are going to instinctively try to catch it and should never be punished. On the other hand a cats natural behaviour can seem cruel to us especially when they don't kill straight away.

Does your cat hunt? Do they present you with dead things? Or do they bring live prey home and continue to play with it? How do you handle it? Do you wish you could stop it?

I don't have a cat anymore, but I always loved cats,, and have a cat for almost all of my life. Some were hunters; others were not, and would not catch a mouse if you put it in front of them. One cat in particular hated mice, and he would run away of he even saw a mouse !
We had one beautiful blue Maltese cat back when the kids were little and we lived out in the country, and that cat was the best hunter that I have ever seen ! Grey would go out hunting and come home dragging a fat ground squirrel (gopher) that was almost as big as she was.
When Grey had a litter of kittens, she would hunt mice, birds, and gophers for them to eat all of the time, and that kept her busy all the time between feeding the kittens and hunting for rodents for them to eat.
Basically, I have no problem with a cat that wants to go out and hunt rodents. I don't like mice anywhere near the house, and having a few cats around goes a long way towards solving that problem. Farmers and ranchers will always have several cats out in their barns, and most feed stores also have a cat that sleeps in the back room and watches over the grain bins.

Your story reminds me of the best hunter cat I ever had the privilege to know (and knowing him was a privilege - he was an exceptional cat). He was a big un-neutered tom, black body white paws and nose (that quite common pattern that almost the reverse of Siamese colouring) and belonged to my landlady when I was much younger. His crowning success hunting was to take a seagull on the wing down - they are big aggressive birds and awesome fliers and with wings the same size as him. He had led up in bushes next to grass and waited until a flock were grazing before charging and leaping onto one. I have never seen anything like it and never known another cat attempt it.

I agree cats can be good for avoiding or reducing rodent problems - although I think I would be removing less field voles if the cats did not keep bringing live ones in. We do sometimes get rats around here (close to farms and allotments) but I wish the cats would not tangle with them as a wild rat can seriously injure a cat. If someone has a problem with rats I recommend terriers rather than cats as there is less risk to the pet.

So, I know this will sound a bit silly but yes my younger cat hunts....toy mice!!! He is an indoor cat and really never goes outside other than our enclosed back porch. I bought him those small toy mice and he loves them. It is so funny to watch because I honestly think he thinks their real. He does exactly what an outside cat does, I'm sure!!!

We get a kick out of watching him. Such a good hunter!!!

Danyel

My female cats like to hunt, but my male cats are lazy and have no interest in hunting. They like to do more napping and lounging around the yard. My lady cats like to get birds and they even got some bunnies this weekend. They found little bunnies and left them in my backyard. That was pretty traumatic for me. I try to make sure that they are well fed, but they still have that desire to hunt.

Ella, my young one (-1 year) caught a mouse a few days ago. As far as I am aware, that was her first kill larger than a bug. We've been living near our land up north during the spring, summer and fall for the past few years and, last year, we spent the winter up north to, so our house has been empty for a while. Subsequently, it seems that a mouse decided that it might be save to come on in.

There is a small hole in one wall, along a heater pipe leading from the main part of the house to the library, which also serves as an entryway, as it is usually unheated. Apparently that's where the mouse came in.

I walked in the room, I guess, just as she saw it, because I saw her scramble up against the wall by the heater pipe. I thought she was batting a toy around, then I saw that it was a mouse. She killed it almost instantly.

Meanwhile, our two older ones, who are twin (24 y/o) sisters, have never hunted. In another place we lived, Cutie glanced over at a mouse that had come in the house once, and then turned away, uninterested. Her sister, Lydia, caught a bird outdoors once, but then decided that catch-and-release was the way to go. She covered the bird with both her paws, held it there for a moment, then released it and watched it fly away.

I guess that puts paid to the idea that hunting in instinctive in cats then lol. No doubt it they are alone and starving most cats are perfectly able to catch their own food but as several have demonstrated on here not all hunt just for the sake of hunting and some will release catches. I just wish my lot would find somewhere else to release rather than my front room.

I think that it does make a difference whether the cat is hungry, and also whether the mother cat has taught the kittens to hunt. So, if the mother was a house cat and never hunted, and then you have a kitten, and it never learns to hunt; it might not have that hunter instinct.
Some cats just seem more inclined to hunt than others, in any case, and I have had cats that would actually run away if they saw a mouse !
One cat that I had just loved catching anything, and he would track down those little lizards with the bright blue tails----- those little rascals are FAST ! ! But he also went after birds, and when I was fishing and landed a fish, he grabbed it as fast as I got it off of the hook, and ate it. That cat just loved fresh fish.

Here is a cute video of a cat that just loves birds, and is not a hunter at all....

http://youtu.be/sumn6flhNtg

Ella just got another mouse yesterday. Meanwhile, my two twenty-four year-olds have never caught a mouse or a bird, as far as I am aware. I saw Ella throwing it up in the air and catching it. I thought it was a toy mouse at first, because I've got a few of them around but no, it was a real mouse.

As an unrelated item, I had to bring Ella into the cat emergency room tonight, which is a drive of about 75 miles each way, and a cost of $166. Her right eye was swollen. The vet found no scratches on her cornea, which was the main concern. He couldn't find anything anywhere else but thought she might have gotten a small scratch and then exacerbated it be rubbing it. So, she got some eye ointments at the vet, and another one that I have to give her three times a day. Her eye already looks better so it appears to be working.

Glad to hear that Ella is mending - although that is a heck of a journey to see the vet. I guess one advantage of living in the UK is that there is pretty much always a vet close - although in an emergency even a short distance is too far.
I think hunting is a mix of instinct, training and personality - some cats will hunt no matter what others will not bother unless starving.

(01-08-2015, 08:17 AM)cyberpuppet Wrote: Glad to hear that Ella is mending - although that is a heck of a journey to see the vet. I guess one advantage of living in the UK is that there is pretty much always a vet close - although in an emergency even a short distance is too far.

We have a veterinary office in the next town over, about twelve miles from me, but it's only open one day a week, and then for only a few hours.

This is just the second time that Ella has been to see a veterinarian and she was far more trusting this time than the last. Last time, she seemed to think that she needed to get away from me in order to be safe from the strangers in the veterinary office. This time, she would turn to me for reassurance.

I'm not sure what happened, but I have a pretty good idea. Cutie, one of my 24-year-olds, feels the need to assert her role as the cat in charge, and she gets a little rough sometimes.

I don't think she means to. At her age, I think she's having some trouble gauging things, since I've noticed that she is far more likely to scratch me while playing now, whereas she was always pretty careful about that before. She also has a habit of nipping my finger when she thinks it's time for me to get out of bed, and has always been very good at modifying the pressure so as to wake me up without hurting me. I think she doesn't always know that her claws are out or that she's biting too hard, because it's not as if her personality has changed.

My guess is that she got into it with Ella because she wouldn't let her clean her or something, and Ella got scratched. It could be something entirely different though. Although the tissue around her eye was swollen, the vet didn't find any scratches. He thought it might have been a very small scratch that Ella exacerbated by rubbing at it.

(01-08-2015, 08:17 AM)cyberpuppet Wrote: I think hunting is a mix of instinct, training and personality - some cats will hunt no matter what others will not bother unless starving.

Yes, I have had cats who have taken great pains to teach their kittens how to hunt, while others would take no part in it. Cutie and Lydia's mom never hunted, or their grandmother, for that matter. Although their great-grandmother did, it apparently didn't pass down that far.

When their mom was still with us, we had a mouse in our house one time and, although we had three perfectly healthy cats in the house, they were all quite willing to share their space. They'd glance at it, as if to say, "Don't worry, it's just a mouse. It won't eat much."

The cat where I used to work hunts a lot, and he has hunted all sorts of things from mice, a small rat, several types of bird, a gofer, an alligator lizard and even several bunnies. He does not always kill them fast though, which has bothered me. I had to kick him off the front lawn once when he had a bunny, only to discover it wasn't dead yet and it squeaked. That was quite disturbing and I almost yelled at him to finish it off NOW. Poor gardener had to dispose of the half he didn't finish because he was so full.

I don't really have a problem with cats hunting. I think it's kind of sad that animals eat other animals, but I don't blame the cat for being a cat. He's so healthy because of all the fresh meat he eats and he's a sweet cat.

I think that the instinct to find food is always there, in any animal. However, in animals like dogs and cats, and probably even some birds; we have provided food for so long that now, both ourselves and the animal that we keep as a pet thinks that humans are spposed to provide food for an animal.
Of course, some pets are kept in the house, and they couldn't go out and hunt, even if they were inclined to do so; so it is not always that the animal does not want to find food; there is just no food for them to find, so why bother.
Most cats like to play with toys and pretend that they are hunting. They even have little games on the ipads for cats to pretend to hunt mice. I have never actually seen a cat doing this; but there are videos on youtube, and the cats seem to really enjoy it.

Our indoor/outdoor-fenced-yard cat hunts indoors. I have to admit she has caught a few mice over the past few years. She is normally an older, somewhat languid kitty but if she detects a little mouse-rustling, it is amazing to see her snap into a tense, on-point hunter mode and scout around for the source of the noise. We don't mind if she does this indoors. Mice can carry hantavirus which is no joke for humans to contact. When she kills a mouse, she does bring it to us and I dispose of it in the backyard.

Cats have a deleterious effect on songbird populations. However, I've never either seen songbirds on the ground (we do have elevated feeders) or have seen her catch a bird of any kind. That's her (Carolina) in my avatar, incidentally.

Hunting is their job. I live in an old wooden house in an orchard and would probably be homeless if the cats didn't hunt...as a team! (That's one of the special skills social cats have.) In summer I try to offer them treats and grab and burn vermin; in winter, well, some local humans eat local squirrels in winter.

I will say that when the cats have offered me a freshly killed squirrel, or worse yet a quarter (usually the one with the tail), I've never understood those humans!