Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Flo the hunter

When Flo was a kitten she used to hunt sticks, or rather twigs, lol. She would drag thr poor 'things' through the cat flap and leave them for me to find in the morning. At one point she had so many I could have used them to have a bbq, haha.

Then one night she caught a mouse, the thing was tiny, but I was so proud of my girl, I lavished her in praise, clever kitty!

And then we moved out of the city and into the country.....and that's when her true hunter self began to emerge. For the first few months we would come down to mice and shrews, sometimes 3 or 4, dotted around the house, thankfully always downstairs. One a few occasions she managed to catch a bird but again thankfully only a few.

At that point I decided to put bells on their collars, Josh isn't quite as bad but then he is much younger than Flo. Things improved and although we still have a mouse or shrew occasionally, they aren't half eaten or pulled to bits, eeuuww.

Last Friday afternoon I came home to a patch a fur and a bunny tail in the dining room surrounded by blood, loads of it. Luckily I got it all out the carpet! I'm not sure what happened to the rest of it but I thought perhaps she had stolen part of someone elses kill....

until last night! I was in bed, asleep, and Stu called up to me that he thought I should come down. She was in the dining room, under the table with a rabbit! A little one, but never the less it was at least half the size of her. I chased her out and got Stuart to make sure it was dead, I had visions of touching it and finding it was just stunned and not dead. I may have fainted at that point! But no is was dead and Stu carried it out, by it's ears, and threw it up on the garage roof for the owls and crows.

I have no problem with her being a hunter and no one in our villiage objects to cats killing rabbits (as they eat all the veggies) but I really don't want them in my house! I may have to resort to locking the cats out at night.

Now as a scrapper you may ask if I took photos, lol, i'm afraid NOT! Although this morning I did think that maybe I should have kept it to pose in the garden and get some close up shots. I will not be doing dead bunny LOs anytime soon!

1 comment:

Jen said...

Ew! My mum's cats used to do this - just leaving a bunny tail. Poor baby bunnies. My own cats have only brought in one little mouse or shrew or whatever it was. Dead but not a mark on it... maybe it died of fright. Oh yes, and once we got a LIVE frog/toad thingy. That was a bit more creepy, cos it was alive, but it was playing dead so I was able to put it outside in a safe place. You do know it's an honour, don't you!!?? Their way of giving you gifts!