How to stop my cat bringing in birds and mice
Discussion
My cat has started brining in other animals to "show me".
Usually this involves her running in through the catflap a quick circuit of the sitting room and then back out the cat flap. Which as she does not seem to kill them I can live with.
However, I have had to rescue numerous birds from her, including finding one hiding in behing my curtains (I got such a fright I screamed like a girl....) At 2am last night I heard a sqeak and ran downstairs to find her chasing a mouse or vowel around the sitting room, before I could get it it ran into the fire, which I then had to dismantle to get it out.
Apart from looking the cat flap any tips on how I can stop this?
Thanks
Usually this involves her running in through the catflap a quick circuit of the sitting room and then back out the cat flap. Which as she does not seem to kill them I can live with.
However, I have had to rescue numerous birds from her, including finding one hiding in behing my curtains (I got such a fright I screamed like a girl....) At 2am last night I heard a sqeak and ran downstairs to find her chasing a mouse or vowel around the sitting room, before I could get it it ran into the fire, which I then had to dismantle to get it out.
Apart from looking the cat flap any tips on how I can stop this?
Thanks
t - too slow 
I was so proud the other day as my fat useless cat caught a field mouse. Showed it to us then took it back out in the garden.
The last thing I wanted was for it to drop it in the house (still alive).
Not much you can do though apart from clear up the remains. Just hope it's not like my mates, he gets at least one a day and had 5 on a single day a few weeks back. Calls them the furry mafia.
The last thing I wanted was for it to drop it in the house (still alive).
Not much you can do though apart from clear up the remains. Just hope it's not like my mates, he gets at least one a day and had 5 on a single day a few weeks back. Calls them the furry mafia.
Mine do this quite regularly, although mostly mice. Most of the time they remember to drop them outside, play with it and then kill it - but occasionally they bring them indoors to play with - and in my bathroom.
I've set up a small mouse "safety" place where the mouse can run and hide - it's just a cardboard tub with a small book at the end wedged between the cat litter tray and a wall. When I get up in the morning, I put a book over the other end, pick the whole lot up, and then release the mouse back outside again (where the cats generally find it and will then kill it).
If they do kill it indoors, then there's the mouse's stomach that needs to be picked up and thrown away before it gets trodden on
...
They do have bells, and I think it stops them catching birds (or slows them down dramatically; I think they've caught 5 birds over the past 6 years. And a bat (which I still have no idea how or where). But mice, I think they catch at least one a night.
I've set up a small mouse "safety" place where the mouse can run and hide - it's just a cardboard tub with a small book at the end wedged between the cat litter tray and a wall. When I get up in the morning, I put a book over the other end, pick the whole lot up, and then release the mouse back outside again (where the cats generally find it and will then kill it).
If they do kill it indoors, then there's the mouse's stomach that needs to be picked up and thrown away before it gets trodden on
...They do have bells, and I think it stops them catching birds (or slows them down dramatically; I think they've caught 5 birds over the past 6 years. And a bat (which I still have no idea how or where). But mice, I think they catch at least one a night.
If you confiscate anything they bring in, they soon learn to devour outside (or to eat discreetly). Mostly. We've had a couple of pathetic little piles of feathers on the carpet this year, and once a bird's foot. They don't do it much, though. In the old house, we once went away for a week with the neighbours popping in to feed the mogs. We came home to a dead mouse under the sofa 
.
My sister used to have a cat which was basically a velociraptor in feline shape. It lived at my house for a while, and once dragged a very large and mortally wounded pigeon through the catflap, which then flapped around the house bleeding profusely and flying into things. The house looked like some sort of chicken-slaughter based voodoo ritual had gone horribly wrong.
. My sister used to have a cat which was basically a velociraptor in feline shape. It lived at my house for a while, and once dragged a very large and mortally wounded pigeon through the catflap, which then flapped around the house bleeding profusely and flying into things. The house looked like some sort of chicken-slaughter based voodoo ritual had gone horribly wrong.
Luckily ours only brings small stuff in.....last night we were watching TV in the dark when the bloody thing chased, what looked like, a large spider across the carpet. Put the lights on to find it was an Elephant Hawk Moth, lovely looking thing. I managed to get it before the cat killed it and set it free
Deva Link said:
It's reckoned in some areas that cats are having a serious impact on the local small mammal population.
I think one of ours killed all the rats in the compost heap pretty much as soon as we moved in here. I won't cry too much over that, though 
I've seen them kill and eat voles, but then voles are barely above grass in the food web, and are important food items for foxes, buzzards, kestrels, stoats & weasels, etc - they breed fast and high mortality is just part of their normal population dynamics. I don't like it when they bother the slow worms in the garden, but they've only killed one to my knowledge (and given that they can shed their tails and escape when grabbed by a predator, finding a chewed up bit of slow worm tail doesn't necessarily prove they killed that one).
Edited by otolith on Thursday 9th July 12:39
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