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

(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."