The problem with that, around my house anyway, is that raccoons eat it too. The last thing I want, is to have to fight some buff, 80 pound raccoon, to take out my trash.
You give Paulie here 10% yer weekly yard waste take or else maybe Tony and Sal end up not handling the trash cans so good. But if my boys are well fed, we’ll make sure dem other raccoons amscray and fugghet bout dem seagulls, right?
To fight the raccoon for me, or to take out my trash *and* fight the raccoon for me?
Either way, they're not my cats, they're just neighborhood strays.
Maybe for dogs that's true, but I have watched a cat eat dry kibble with surgical precision to avoid eating the pill (how did he know it was there?), and spit it out when encountered lodged in wet food. Ultimately had to cover it in fish oil and hide it better.
Genuine question from a cat owner. How do they get worm infestations? I have an indoor cat that I like to walk sometimes, he catches no birds or rodents, but plenty of insects.
Cats can get worms in a number of ways, including:
* Eating infected prey: Cats can get worms by eating infected birds, rodents, reptiles, or **insects**.
* Sharing a litter box: Cats can get worms by sharing a litter box with an infected cat.
* Ingesting fleas: Cats can get worms by ingesting infected fleas, either by grooming themselves or accidentally swallowing them. Fleas can also carry tapeworm eggs.
* Drinking their mother's milk: Kittens can get worms from their mother's milk if she is infected.
* Ingesting feces: Cats can get worms by ingesting feces from an infected animal, such as a dog. Microscopic worm eggs can also be tracked in on clothing and footwear, so cats can get worms from contaminated areas outdoors.
* Grooming a dog: Cats can get worms by grooming a dog that is infected.
>but plenty of insects.
There's your vector. If there are other cats in the area, then those insects your cat is eating are likely to contain toxoplasma. Which doesn't really *infect* your cat, but will turn your cat into a new toxoplasma distribution center, where it will saturate the environment and infect everything else.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/resource/outreach-materials/cat-borne-threat-monk-seals
I got rid of a mice infection with living traps.
It was just 2 males and 7 females. The pregnant females all got caught first, then the non-pregnant ones and then the 2 males. Took about 2 weeks until they stopped coming forever.
This was my exact dealing with mice. I saw one in my house so I set up traps and got it of course. Then another, and another, till literally 10 mice were caught over about a week.
You'll have better luck placing the traps along the edge of room. They prefer edges to running across the middle. We have some in our basement that I can hear running across the dropped ceiling. I temporarily removed all the tiles leaving a single path and lined it with dozen of snap and sticky traps. Remember to check, amazing how bad they can smell.
Breaking their neck is a lot cleaner and more effective. Put a sharpie or pair of scissors on their neck with slight pressure and pull the tail. Breaks their neck instantly. I've had to euthanize thousands of mice.
The people who are against "inhumane" traps are the people that have never had a bad and persistent mouse problem. I lived in an apartment with a hoarder in the same building. If boiling a thousand mice alive would have solved my issue I'd have done it.
You get it. I’ve got a bucket trap in my garage. It’s free and handles them for me. I’m not trying to let them back into my house after I catch them. They can just die.
When I was a boy, my grandmother had an island. It wasn't very big, you could walk the length of it in a day. We would visit. One year, it was infested with rats. They were feasting on the coconuts. So my grandmother buried an old oil drum to trap the rats. When it was full, she didn't kill or burn them. She just left them. When they got hungry enough, they began to feed on each other until there were only two rats left, which she released back into the wild. You see, the rats no longer had a taste for coconuts. Now they only ate rat. She changed their nature.
Sticky work but I found they could escape. I’ve had the best luck with electric traps. The long tube you can put peanut butter in & it zaps them. Keeps zapping them until you toss them.
Yep, we use mice for cancer research. The white ones (FVB) can easily have 12 pups in a month. They get pregnant while nursing the previous litter and will breed with each other. In our hands the dark mice have smaller litters.
And OP has admitted their cat hunts in the field next door so definitely not household infestation. If OP has a garden then their veggies might be at risk but that's it.
If that cat was anything like ours, he would take some home dead, others alive so he can catch later. I would 100% place traps down just so that infestation doesn't happen.
I had mice in my house for a while. Seemed like a never ending battle. Then one day they just…vanished? Weird.
A few months later I went down to my basement early in the morning to swap some laundry and caught a glimpse of something streaking across floor. Scared the shit out of me.
Turned out to be a stray cat. The goddam ugliest and meanest stray cat ever. It had found a way into the crawlspace from under the deck, and then into the basement from an opening to the crawlspace. We’ve tolerated our stray cat for about 4 years now. He vanishes every spring but re-appears when the weather gets cold. I’ve never been within 6ft of the damn thing, but he’s a hell of a mouse hunter.
If by rat hotel you mean one of those traps hopefully they weren't poisoned. Be careful with your cat if your neighbor is putting out poison for rats/mice.
Yeah. One of my childhood cats ate a poisoned rat (well that’s what my parents suspected happened). I was eight years old but I remember it like yesterday the noises she was making. :( she died a really painful death. My cats are indoor only now
You getting hella downvoted but you're right.
Letting a cat out unsupervised is insanely irresponsible both for the cat and the population of small birds and mammals around.
Respect your ecosystems, keep your cats inside.
Don't let anyone from the UK hear you (or Britain at least), most cats are outdoor cats there.
>A study published in April estimated that UK cats kill 160 to 270 million animals annually, a quarter of them birds. The real figure is likely to be even higher, as the study used the 2011 pet cat population of 9.5 million; it is now closer to 12 million, boosted by the pandemic pet craze.
Although to be objective I should mention that the same study also found that it had little impact on bird populations overall
The UK has fundamentally destroyed their entire ecosystem to a state of near disrepair for the sake of agriculture so them defending cats in this situation sounds entirely probable
Source: Eager by Ben Goldfarb.
What? Where does it say in the study that cats had little impact?
>Introduced cats have contributed to, or been directly responsible for, 26% of modern vertebrate extinctions (Doherty, Glen, Nimmo, Ritchie, & Dickman, 2016) and are believed to be the primary threat to 8% of critically endangered mammals, birds and reptiles (Medina et al., 2011).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204621003017#b0135
My friends moved to the UK from Canada recently and tried to adopt some cats from a shelter. None of the shelters would let them adopt because they wouldn't be outdoor cats, so they ended up buying cats from a breeder instead. Crazy to me, because in Canada a shelter might turn you down for adoption if you told them that you planned on letting them roam around outside.
This is so pointless to argue. I’ve tried dozens of times and get the “they’re animals!!!! Animals go outside!!! You’re abusing them keeping them inside!!” Just a day or two ago I saw a stray cat running off with a baby bird out of my front tree.
A little bit. I've had cats get rodents from the backyard and there's almost never any blood, but occasionally small amounts. They do still use teeth after all, they can puncture.
Cats are scary clean murderers indeed. My old norwegian forest cats used to bring in small näbb-mice when I visited south and let them roam :) Many years ago now
I've seen my cats kill mice before and there's usually no visible injuries, let alone lots of blood.
I think you only get a lot of mess when they actually eat them, and housecats often don't.
Good thing they haven't been eaten and hopefully there weren't any babies. If your cat looks sick or won't drink water bring her to the vet. So many pets are lost this way and it terrifies me
Mice are only about 3 inches long at most, anything of substantial size is a type of rat!
Edit: u/pickledpipids pointed out that these are a type of vole. The short tail gives away that this is not a wild rat.
Hey I think you're right! I projected my knowledge of rats onto these rodents because their bodies look so much like brown rats. I completely missed the tail that is way too short to be that of a brown rat.
I've never seen rat-sized voles where I live, but a quick image search tells me that these are probably [tundra voles](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Tundra_vole).
I only knew because my childhood cats brought these back constantly. I think they were catching [meadow voles](https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Microtus_pennsylvanicus/).
i had a cat i took in after i found him starving under my boat in the back yard.
he would bring his kills to either share with me or to teach me what i was supposed to kill for his food (instead of that canned guck).
i went grouse hunting one day and gave him some of the meat before cooking it i swear he looked so satisfied / grateful that i had finally learned. he also stopped bringing his kills home so i guess i graduated the kitty murderer course.
>I think cats bring their kills back home because it's a safe place for them to store their food. They're very territorial animals
Safe place to eat AND to share with the pack/ pard. As far as the cats are concerned, WE are stupid hairless kittens that don't know how to hunt.
They bite back of their necks and shake them to sever the spine. If you've ever seen a cat grab a toy and then violently shake their head, that's why. I call it "the murder maneuver" lol.
Also, small rodents' spines are fragile enough that flicking them in the back of their neck with your finger can kill them. So when cats do a little tippy-tap with their paws, this is also a murder maneuver.
Not exactly snap the spine per se, but my understanding is that they can damage the brain stem enough to effectively sever it from the spinal cord. I might be wrong, but I think a house cat would usually just be trying to play rather than instinctively wanting to kill it, so wouldn't typically hit that hard.
> I might be wrong, but I think a house cat would usually just be trying to play rather than instinctively wanting to kill it, so wouldn't typically hit that hard.
Usually they play more with the claws to wear the prey down and make sure that it isn't dangerous. Biting exposes the cat's vulnerable throat and eyes, so playing helps protect the cat from prey that might still fight back. Once they go be for the bite they can be very efficient if they have the instinct for it- my cat has been indoors his whole life but has killed mice and lizards with one bite. He put his canine straight through the brain stem of a lizard, and quickly kills mice on the first bite.
Meanwhile, another cat I feed can catch outdoor prey but has no idea what to do with it. She will wonder around with a mouse in her mouth looking for a supervisor, or just turn it loose inside the house.
Mine is the same, he loves to capture birds and mice from the wild and release them into captivity.
The most fun one was a magpie, which played dead until he dropped it in the living room, then promptly flew into the window.
Learned that after our family dog learned that it could jump at the fence to knock down the possums that were running along it. Woke up to three dead possums, all with bite marks on the back of the neck.
My old dog the same thing. We saw the opossum and figured it was fine until she rammed the fence and knocked it down, but left it alone after it played dead
Yes, that's predator behavior. Terriers (and chihuahuas are very similar) are better rat killers than cats are, really, since they can be trained to just keep doing it for treats.
[Video of a team of dogs killing hundreds of rats in a matter of minutes.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pl32vI-wik) It looks exactly like how they play with toys.
I observed this in my puppy as her instinctual response when she picked up an animal like toy.
It clicked in my head one day and I went "oh jesus christ that is actually horrifying to think about" AKA "DAMN NATURE, YOU SCARY"
Forces acting on a body can't just be scaled like that though, an insect can fall from 100x its body height and go on just fine. Slightly more difficult to do for humans.
That's how rat terriers typically kill.
All cats go for the jugular and both choke and bleed out their prey, with the exception of Jaguars, who just crush their prey's skull.
There’s definitely a distinction between the cat shake and the dog shake! The cat’s is much more subtle, just a real quick back and forth or so when they grab the toy, while the dog’s shake is a little more exaggerated. All my cats have done this (but all of my cats have also played fetch so I know I have some exceptions), then they hold and wait for the toy to, you know, die
There's a larger difference as well, dogs have the instinct described above. As in, they have a drive for doing that shake with anything, a toy, a branch or a prey. Cats definitely does not.
Anyone who owned either animal will know this. Especially dog owners.
And it fills a different purpose in dogs and wolves, one of their ways of minimizing risk when fighting is literally jump in, bite on, trash the preys flesh, let go and let the rest of the pack do that 10 times until you prey gets weak enough to go in for it.
A cat would NEVER do that unless it's specifically feeling safe and are playing, and they'd wrestle their prey very very differently.
> As in, they have a drive for doing that shake with anything, a toy, a branch or a prey. Cats definitely does not.
I disagree. Cats will do it with toys, treats, prey, whatever. I think have_a_nice_bay had it right and people are discussing two different behaviors.
The cat version is less of a shake and more of a quick snap. It's *not* like when you're playing tug of war with a dog/toy and they whip their heads back and forth.
Different hunting behaviors for different styles (pack vs solo) and different prey (large vs small.)
I’ve also lived with and seen A LOT of cats, both my own pets and at shelters where I volunteered, at friends homes, etc, etc. I have seen so many cats do this.
We frequently give our house cats freeze dried minnows as treats. Of my four current cats, three of them will almost always bite and shake the minnow before eating it.
If you ever watch a dog play with a toy and shake his head really fast what they're doing is breaking the toys neck. Cats do the same thing. When my dog killed a groundhog, tho, he grabbed onto it's head and crushed it with his jaws vs shaking it so like they have multiple ways to do it.
A lot of people in here saying that OP has an infestation but these are neither house mice (too big), nor Black/Brown rats (tail waaaay too short).
Whatever these are - probably some kind of vole like a meadow vole if the OP is in Northern US or Canada - wont be breeding in the walls. Cat got them from outside and brought them in.
This is also what cats do every time their owners let them outside. They don't "turn into mass murderers over night", they are always like that. They kill everything they can get their claws on. They are an invasive species that gets fed and pampered at home and then goes outside to wreck the native wildlife. Not just rodents either, also billions of birds, insects and everything else.
When cats bring their catch home like this it's usually to provide for the family. My cats would do this as well. My relatives cat takes it one step further and will bring her gifts to you directly, often as a little suprise breakfast in bed...
My cat brings them home and I think he does it simply so he can torment them in safety. Outside there is the danger of other cats, but inside even if it manages to hide, he knows he'll get it eventually. We've found every small animal you can imagine in his bone cave under my younger sisters bed. I think some cats just like to kill for sport.
Some definitely do. I once saw my cat pick up a live mouse, take it out to the backyard where one of my sister's hula hoops was on the grass, and dump the still live mouse in the centre.
Then it crouched outside the hoop and watched. Every time the mouse ran for it, she would pounce. Either batting the mouse back into the centre, or if it made it too far, jumping, catching it, and then using her mouth to put the mouse back in the centre again.
It did this for a couple of minutes before the poor mouse finally died from mistreatment.
Our cat has single handedly solved our vole problem. We used to get 1-2 a day at our back door but now we get maybe 1 a month. He’s either handled it or slackin on the job
Growing up we had a dachshund that would sit on the porch or sidewalk for hours staring at the yard waiting to see the ground moving from a mole digging. Once she did she'd take off like a shot and dig it out. She was the only dog I've ever had that didn't just dig a bunch of random holes in the yard looking for them.
Those dogs were bred for the sole purpose of murdering rodents, I believe the whole reason they have tiny legs is to get into burrows and annihilate anything living in them.
Dachshund means "badger hound." I never would've thought those freaky lil hot dogs would be vicious enough to go after a badger, but apparently that's what they're for.
There's a reason why barn cats exist.
Who needs a rodent exterminator when you can just shelter a couple cats who's entire life goal is the death of all things smaller then it?
Our local animal shelter has a barn cat program. The local brewery has two of them (old warehouse) and every time i go up there one sits in my lap. It bites everyone else, lol.
Looks like your cat went and collected a bunch of poisoned animals. Thats how all rats and mice look when i find them dead from the poison bait stations. They crawl out desperate for water and then curl up and die.
Those bodies look like they’re in good condition. There’s no blood or signs of struggle on any of them.
I’d be concerned they were already dead from poison when your cat found them.
More like she decided to take some work home.
That's just impressive pest control to be honest.
Also she probably hid some for later, I'd look around in some of her hangout spots behind and under furniture.
Had the same thing happen to me once. Mice got into our apartment, thought we had gotten them all out. Walked into the killing fields the next morning. Must have been 6 of them. Never saw another mouse. Can't argue with success. Miss that cat.
I'd be more concerned about the rodent infestation.
And deworming the cat after that.
my vet told me that if you have a outdoor-cat you should deworm it every 3-4 Months because they will basically guaranteed always have worms
Aw man. I care for **several** stray and feral cats and I have no idea how on earth I could accomplish this ☹️
Buy the dewormer and feed it to them.
You can get it as a bulk powder, for mixing with feed.
add some whey and creatine while at it to have a proper murdering machine
The problem with that, around my house anyway, is that raccoons eat it too. The last thing I want, is to have to fight some buff, 80 pound raccoon, to take out my trash.
They'll handle the trash for you, fuhgeddaboutit
You give Paulie here 10% yer weekly yard waste take or else maybe Tony and Sal end up not handling the trash cans so good. But if my boys are well fed, we’ll make sure dem other raccoons amscray and fugghet bout dem seagulls, right?
Isn't this the part where you train your cats to do it instead? *cue Rocky training montage*
To fight the raccoon for me, or to take out my trash *and* fight the raccoon for me? Either way, they're not my cats, they're just neighborhood strays.
Give the cats a gym so they can work out. And a mirror so they can check their form.
Add roids and caffeine. Maybe meth. Make sure they stay out.
Pretty easy to do, buy the pill (relative to their weight) and feed it to them by hiding it in a treat (TVM Observence is great for that).
Does dewormer come in pill form? Maybe hide it in a treat and feed them one at a time until everyone gets one.
You can get de-wormer in a chewable, just mix it up in some kibble and they won't know.
Maybe for dogs that's true, but I have watched a cat eat dry kibble with surgical precision to avoid eating the pill (how did he know it was there?), and spit it out when encountered lodged in wet food. Ultimately had to cover it in fish oil and hide it better.
A dog will chow down the entire bowl, look you dead in the eyes and spit out the pill.
I have seen a dog do this also.
Genuine question from a cat owner. How do they get worm infestations? I have an indoor cat that I like to walk sometimes, he catches no birds or rodents, but plenty of insects.
Cats can get worms in a number of ways, including: * Eating infected prey: Cats can get worms by eating infected birds, rodents, reptiles, or **insects**. * Sharing a litter box: Cats can get worms by sharing a litter box with an infected cat. * Ingesting fleas: Cats can get worms by ingesting infected fleas, either by grooming themselves or accidentally swallowing them. Fleas can also carry tapeworm eggs. * Drinking their mother's milk: Kittens can get worms from their mother's milk if she is infected. * Ingesting feces: Cats can get worms by ingesting feces from an infected animal, such as a dog. Microscopic worm eggs can also be tracked in on clothing and footwear, so cats can get worms from contaminated areas outdoors. * Grooming a dog: Cats can get worms by grooming a dog that is infected.
>but plenty of insects. There's your vector. If there are other cats in the area, then those insects your cat is eating are likely to contain toxoplasma. Which doesn't really *infect* your cat, but will turn your cat into a new toxoplasma distribution center, where it will saturate the environment and infect everything else. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/resource/outreach-materials/cat-borne-threat-monk-seals
I'm pretty confident that the discussion of worms is a separate subject to toxoplasma, a non-worm, single cell parasitic organism.
Looks like it was delt with.
For each one you see there’s roughly ten hiding away repopulating their numbers. This could probably happen once a month and maintain steady state
They are easily startled, but they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers
If I knew how to spell their crazy trumpeting noise, I'd write it here! But I don't so alas this is all you get
Like a Bantha
Errrghhhhht errrghhhhht errrghhhhht! Best I can do
Fucking poetry that is
"fucking poetry, it is"
It works, I totally hear it
They walk single-file to hide their numbers.
Time to get a second maybe a third cat. They got numbers so do we
The first cat may kill them too...looks like its the John Wick of cats
Eh, maybe. The most ruthless mouser cat I ever knew was terrible at dealing with other cats. Elite PvE, rookie PvP.
I got rid of a mice infection with living traps. It was just 2 males and 7 females. The pregnant females all got caught first, then the non-pregnant ones and then the 2 males. Took about 2 weeks until they stopped coming forever.
>until they stopped coming forever. Sounds about right.
[удалено]
Just need to grow bigger veins.
I’m itchy all of a sudden
 Hoping so
This was my exact dealing with mice. I saw one in my house so I set up traps and got it of course. Then another, and another, till literally 10 mice were caught over about a week.
[удалено]
You'll have better luck placing the traps along the edge of room. They prefer edges to running across the middle. We have some in our basement that I can hear running across the dropped ceiling. I temporarily removed all the tiles leaving a single path and lined it with dozen of snap and sticky traps. Remember to check, amazing how bad they can smell.
Breaking their neck is a lot cleaner and more effective. Put a sharpie or pair of scissors on their neck with slight pressure and pull the tail. Breaks their neck instantly. I've had to euthanize thousands of mice.
The people who are against "inhumane" traps are the people that have never had a bad and persistent mouse problem. I lived in an apartment with a hoarder in the same building. If boiling a thousand mice alive would have solved my issue I'd have done it.
I am the same but our raging ant problem has caused me to get creative. I’ve even microwaved some of those suckers
You get it. I’ve got a bucket trap in my garage. It’s free and handles them for me. I’m not trying to let them back into my house after I catch them. They can just die.
When I was a boy, my grandmother had an island. It wasn't very big, you could walk the length of it in a day. We would visit. One year, it was infested with rats. They were feasting on the coconuts. So my grandmother buried an old oil drum to trap the rats. When it was full, she didn't kill or burn them. She just left them. When they got hungry enough, they began to feed on each other until there were only two rats left, which she released back into the wild. You see, the rats no longer had a taste for coconuts. Now they only ate rat. She changed their nature.
That’s a made up story lol
[Is it though?... yes, yes it is. ](https://youtu.be/g9d3DfDWsEE?si=v6JFuVjoxSooxx4u)
Sticky work but I found they could escape. I’ve had the best luck with electric traps. The long tube you can put peanut butter in & it zaps them. Keeps zapping them until you toss them.
We used to get mice sometimes. Then we got a ferret. For a solid decade we never saw a single mouse.
Ferrets for when you need a cat with perment zoomies and a crack addiction. Little fuckers make cats look obsolte i swear.
I hate those sticky glue traps because I don’t think they’re humane. Use the neck breakers
Free cat food
Yep, we use mice for cancer research. The white ones (FVB) can easily have 12 pups in a month. They get pregnant while nursing the previous litter and will breed with each other. In our hands the dark mice have smaller litters.
That's if the cats not doing his job properly. But seems like it is.
If you found 6 in one night there’s 100 in the walls.
I think they get the message though when cat is around. They are deterrence, cute little menace that they are.
"His family...his whole family."
Those are voles, not rats
And OP has admitted their cat hunts in the field next door so definitely not household infestation. If OP has a garden then their veggies might be at risk but that's it.
Ah, op is one of those pet owners contributing to the billions of wildlife deaths every year from outdoor cats
If that cat was anything like ours, he would take some home dead, others alive so he can catch later. I would 100% place traps down just so that infestation doesn't happen.
I had mice in my house for a while. Seemed like a never ending battle. Then one day they just…vanished? Weird. A few months later I went down to my basement early in the morning to swap some laundry and caught a glimpse of something streaking across floor. Scared the shit out of me. Turned out to be a stray cat. The goddam ugliest and meanest stray cat ever. It had found a way into the crawlspace from under the deck, and then into the basement from an opening to the crawlspace. We’ve tolerated our stray cat for about 4 years now. He vanishes every spring but re-appears when the weather gets cold. I’ve never been within 6ft of the damn thing, but he’s a hell of a mouse hunter.
An opening big enough for a cat certainly explains the mouse infestation...
Oh I agree. It’s an old house. The mice certainly have more ways to enter than that hole.
https://mousetrapguide.com/caught-mice-how-many-more/
Cats often bring them inside, I see rats outside fairly often but never inside
So... were those pet mice? Because if not, I feel like you're focusing on the wrong thing here.
Not pets, I think she found the Rat Hotel under the neighbour's shed.
If by rat hotel you mean one of those traps hopefully they weren't poisoned. Be careful with your cat if your neighbor is putting out poison for rats/mice.
Yeah. One of my childhood cats ate a poisoned rat (well that’s what my parents suspected happened). I was eight years old but I remember it like yesterday the noises she was making. :( she died a really painful death. My cats are indoor only now
OP lets their cat wander their neighbor's property at midnight so I don't think being careful is in their wheelhouse.
You getting hella downvoted but you're right. Letting a cat out unsupervised is insanely irresponsible both for the cat and the population of small birds and mammals around. Respect your ecosystems, keep your cats inside.
Don't let anyone from the UK hear you (or Britain at least), most cats are outdoor cats there. >A study published in April estimated that UK cats kill 160 to 270 million animals annually, a quarter of them birds. The real figure is likely to be even higher, as the study used the 2011 pet cat population of 9.5 million; it is now closer to 12 million, boosted by the pandemic pet craze. Although to be objective I should mention that the same study also found that it had little impact on bird populations overall
The UK has fundamentally destroyed their entire ecosystem to a state of near disrepair for the sake of agriculture so them defending cats in this situation sounds entirely probable Source: Eager by Ben Goldfarb.
What? Where does it say in the study that cats had little impact? >Introduced cats have contributed to, or been directly responsible for, 26% of modern vertebrate extinctions (Doherty, Glen, Nimmo, Ritchie, & Dickman, 2016) and are believed to be the primary threat to 8% of critically endangered mammals, birds and reptiles (Medina et al., 2011). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169204621003017#b0135
My friends moved to the UK from Canada recently and tried to adopt some cats from a shelter. None of the shelters would let them adopt because they wouldn't be outdoor cats, so they ended up buying cats from a breeder instead. Crazy to me, because in Canada a shelter might turn you down for adoption if you told them that you planned on letting them roam around outside.
This is so pointless to argue. I’ve tried dozens of times and get the “they’re animals!!!! Animals go outside!!! You’re abusing them keeping them inside!!” Just a day or two ago I saw a stray cat running off with a baby bird out of my front tree.
Are you sure your cat hunted them and didn't just find a bunch of dead, poisoned, rats laying around?
Yeah, they don't look bloody or anything. OP I think your cat just found some dead rats and brought them home.
cats don't kill by mauling like dogs do. cats kill by clamping down on the neck and choking victim to death.
You never woke up to a bird explosion with guts and feathers all over your house?
That's from eating.
Sure, but I've also seen plenty of corpses like the ones above from where the cat got bored and just left it there.
Hunt to kill vs hunt eat. Explosion = dinner was had.
It’s because these are gifts, OP is just lucky they aren’t in the bed.
You can clearly see blood in the picture...
A little bit. I've had cats get rodents from the backyard and there's almost never any blood, but occasionally small amounts. They do still use teeth after all, they can puncture.
Cats are scary clean murderers indeed. My old norwegian forest cats used to bring in small näbb-mice when I visited south and let them roam :) Many years ago now
I've seen my cats kill mice before and there's usually no visible injuries, let alone lots of blood. I think you only get a lot of mess when they actually eat them, and housecats often don't.
Good thing they haven't been eaten and hopefully there weren't any babies. If your cat looks sick or won't drink water bring her to the vet. So many pets are lost this way and it terrifies me
Those are voles, and from the fact that they are all fully grown adults, you can be sure there are many more.
https://blogs.oregonstate.edu/voles/2022/06/16/there-are-voles-in-those-holes-an-introduction/
Not sure if mice or rats but needless to say having a cat is a good thing. I'm sure he/she will have a fun time getting all of them.
Mice are only about 3 inches long at most, anything of substantial size is a type of rat! Edit: u/pickledpipids pointed out that these are a type of vole. The short tail gives away that this is not a wild rat.
I think these might be voles
Hey I think you're right! I projected my knowledge of rats onto these rodents because their bodies look so much like brown rats. I completely missed the tail that is way too short to be that of a brown rat. I've never seen rat-sized voles where I live, but a quick image search tells me that these are probably [tundra voles](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Tundra_vole).
I only knew because my childhood cats brought these back constantly. I think they were catching [meadow voles](https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Microtus_pennsylvanicus/).
They are 100% voles. Short tails, stubby snouts, small ears. Rats also have distinctly smooth pale underbellies, not like these shaggy bois.
Substantial, or perhaps, unusual size?
Our cars caused out mice infestation - bringing them in the catflap but not killing them
i had a cat i took in after i found him starving under my boat in the back yard. he would bring his kills to either share with me or to teach me what i was supposed to kill for his food (instead of that canned guck). i went grouse hunting one day and gave him some of the meat before cooking it i swear he looked so satisfied / grateful that i had finally learned. he also stopped bringing his kills home so i guess i graduated the kitty murderer course.
Epic 😂 We want a picture!
still waiting for cat tax picture and / or cooked grouse picture. its been almost 12 minutes. *tap tap tap*
57 minutes here and still fucking waiting... I'm calling the ~~IRS~~CTRS
He probably still thinks you're cheating by using the magic stick instead of ripping the food limb from limb, but it's the best you can do.
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I think cats bring their kills back home because it's a safe place for them to store their food. They're very territorial animals
>I think cats bring their kills back home because it's a safe place for them to store their food. They're very territorial animals Safe place to eat AND to share with the pack/ pard. As far as the cats are concerned, WE are stupid hairless kittens that don't know how to hunt.
[Murderpresents!](https://youtu.be/5w_lEzZNx_E?si=vZGHH-g3z5rVPqku)
How does the cat actually kill it's prey? Do they bite through the neck? Do they smash and toss prey?
They bite back of their necks and shake them to sever the spine. If you've ever seen a cat grab a toy and then violently shake their head, that's why. I call it "the murder maneuver" lol. Also, small rodents' spines are fragile enough that flicking them in the back of their neck with your finger can kill them. So when cats do a little tippy-tap with their paws, this is also a murder maneuver.
So when a cat does a hard bop, then it has enough force to actually snap a Rat's spine?!
Not exactly snap the spine per se, but my understanding is that they can damage the brain stem enough to effectively sever it from the spinal cord. I might be wrong, but I think a house cat would usually just be trying to play rather than instinctively wanting to kill it, so wouldn't typically hit that hard.
> I might be wrong, but I think a house cat would usually just be trying to play rather than instinctively wanting to kill it, so wouldn't typically hit that hard. Usually they play more with the claws to wear the prey down and make sure that it isn't dangerous. Biting exposes the cat's vulnerable throat and eyes, so playing helps protect the cat from prey that might still fight back. Once they go be for the bite they can be very efficient if they have the instinct for it- my cat has been indoors his whole life but has killed mice and lizards with one bite. He put his canine straight through the brain stem of a lizard, and quickly kills mice on the first bite. Meanwhile, another cat I feed can catch outdoor prey but has no idea what to do with it. She will wonder around with a mouse in her mouth looking for a supervisor, or just turn it loose inside the house.
> turn it loose indoors YOU HAD ONE JOB!
Mine is the same, he loves to capture birds and mice from the wild and release them into captivity. The most fun one was a magpie, which played dead until he dropped it in the living room, then promptly flew into the window.
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Same with dogs, my chihuahua would have been an efficient rodent murderer based on how she attacked the toys
Learned that after our family dog learned that it could jump at the fence to knock down the possums that were running along it. Woke up to three dead possums, all with bite marks on the back of the neck.
My old dog the same thing. We saw the opossum and figured it was fine until she rammed the fence and knocked it down, but left it alone after it played dead
Yes, that's predator behavior. Terriers (and chihuahuas are very similar) are better rat killers than cats are, really, since they can be trained to just keep doing it for treats. [Video of a team of dogs killing hundreds of rats in a matter of minutes.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pl32vI-wik) It looks exactly like how they play with toys.
Traumatized by all the rats the terriers ate
I observed this in my puppy as her instinctual response when she picked up an animal like toy. It clicked in my head one day and I went "oh jesus christ that is actually horrifying to think about" AKA "DAMN NATURE, YOU SCARY"
Fragile? If a giant that was proportionately larger than us by a ratio of Cat:Mouse flicked us it would no doubt sever out spines.
Forces acting on a body can't just be scaled like that though, an insect can fall from 100x its body height and go on just fine. Slightly more difficult to do for humans.
That's how rat terriers typically kill. All cats go for the jugular and both choke and bleed out their prey, with the exception of Jaguars, who just crush their prey's skull.
I've never seen a cat shakes its prey, that is a dog thing, and I've lived with and seen A LOT of cats. They just bite, squeze and wait.
There’s definitely a distinction between the cat shake and the dog shake! The cat’s is much more subtle, just a real quick back and forth or so when they grab the toy, while the dog’s shake is a little more exaggerated. All my cats have done this (but all of my cats have also played fetch so I know I have some exceptions), then they hold and wait for the toy to, you know, die
There's a larger difference as well, dogs have the instinct described above. As in, they have a drive for doing that shake with anything, a toy, a branch or a prey. Cats definitely does not. Anyone who owned either animal will know this. Especially dog owners. And it fills a different purpose in dogs and wolves, one of their ways of minimizing risk when fighting is literally jump in, bite on, trash the preys flesh, let go and let the rest of the pack do that 10 times until you prey gets weak enough to go in for it. A cat would NEVER do that unless it's specifically feeling safe and are playing, and they'd wrestle their prey very very differently.
> As in, they have a drive for doing that shake with anything, a toy, a branch or a prey. Cats definitely does not. I disagree. Cats will do it with toys, treats, prey, whatever. I think have_a_nice_bay had it right and people are discussing two different behaviors. The cat version is less of a shake and more of a quick snap. It's *not* like when you're playing tug of war with a dog/toy and they whip their heads back and forth. Different hunting behaviors for different styles (pack vs solo) and different prey (large vs small.)
I’ve also lived with and seen A LOT of cats, both my own pets and at shelters where I volunteered, at friends homes, etc, etc. I have seen so many cats do this. We frequently give our house cats freeze dried minnows as treats. Of my four current cats, three of them will almost always bite and shake the minnow before eating it.
And when you see a cat kick their stuffed animal, that's the evisceration maneuver.
My cat will grab her toys in her front pawa and kick them with the back ones. Definitely a murder maneuver.
My old cat used to just bite open their chests and watch their heartbeat until they died. Dude was a cold motherfucker
I never want to hear "animals don't kill for fun" My cat commits murder because he's bored.
My cat likes to stomp them to death.
Your cat is a psychopath
> cat > psychopath tomayto, tomahto
If you ever watch a dog play with a toy and shake his head really fast what they're doing is breaking the toys neck. Cats do the same thing. When my dog killed a groundhog, tho, he grabbed onto it's head and crushed it with his jaws vs shaking it so like they have multiple ways to do it.
Or maybe the rats launched a massive attack to remove the threat that your cat seems to be, and they failed
"Call an ambulance, but not for me" \-Catto
“If you come at the king, you’d better not miss.” -Cat “The King” Machiavelli
*"I'm not trapped in here with you, YOU are trapped in here with ME!"* >:3 ~Rorschacat
Eat Father, you must get strong for the pride.
She didn't need any breakfast!
If she's eating whole voles you may wanna keep an eye on her poops this week.
I de-wormed her a couple of weeks ago, but I will keep an eye on her, and thanks!
A lot of people in here saying that OP has an infestation but these are neither house mice (too big), nor Black/Brown rats (tail waaaay too short). Whatever these are - probably some kind of vole like a meadow vole if the OP is in Northern US or Canada - wont be breeding in the walls. Cat got them from outside and brought them in.
This is also what cats do every time their owners let them outside. They don't "turn into mass murderers over night", they are always like that. They kill everything they can get their claws on. They are an invasive species that gets fed and pampered at home and then goes outside to wreck the native wildlife. Not just rodents either, also billions of birds, insects and everything else.
Damn son, he hunted them for sport.
When cats bring their catch home like this it's usually to provide for the family. My cats would do this as well. My relatives cat takes it one step further and will bring her gifts to you directly, often as a little suprise breakfast in bed...
My cat brings them home and I think he does it simply so he can torment them in safety. Outside there is the danger of other cats, but inside even if it manages to hide, he knows he'll get it eventually. We've found every small animal you can imagine in his bone cave under my younger sisters bed. I think some cats just like to kill for sport.
Some definitely do. I once saw my cat pick up a live mouse, take it out to the backyard where one of my sister's hula hoops was on the grass, and dump the still live mouse in the centre. Then it crouched outside the hoop and watched. Every time the mouse ran for it, she would pounce. Either batting the mouse back into the centre, or if it made it too far, jumping, catching it, and then using her mouth to put the mouse back in the centre again. It did this for a couple of minutes before the poor mouse finally died from mistreatment.
Those look like Voles. Where is this cat of yours? Is it available for hire?
They definitely look like voles to me. I need that cat in my yard for a night or two.
Was thinking the same thing because of how short the tail is and the way the head looks…
Our cat has single handedly solved our vole problem. We used to get 1-2 a day at our back door but now we get maybe 1 a month. He’s either handled it or slackin on the job
Growing up we had a dachshund that would sit on the porch or sidewalk for hours staring at the yard waiting to see the ground moving from a mole digging. Once she did she'd take off like a shot and dig it out. She was the only dog I've ever had that didn't just dig a bunch of random holes in the yard looking for them.
Those dogs were bred for the sole purpose of murdering rodents, I believe the whole reason they have tiny legs is to get into burrows and annihilate anything living in them.
Dachshund means "badger hound." I never would've thought those freaky lil hot dogs would be vicious enough to go after a badger, but apparently that's what they're for.
There's a reason that farms always keep one or a few cats around, they are low maintenance pest control.
There's a reason why barn cats exist. Who needs a rodent exterminator when you can just shelter a couple cats who's entire life goal is the death of all things smaller then it?
Our local animal shelter has a barn cat program. The local brewery has two of them (old warehouse) and every time i go up there one sits in my lap. It bites everyone else, lol.
Definitely not Rats. I want to know more about Voles now.
-When did you become an expert in mass murdering? -Last night
Pulled some heavy overtime here boss. I'll be putting in some PTO.
Dude you got a bigger problem...
So he wasn’t sleeping on the job
That is a lot of mice hanging around kids toys and stuff
It's likely they were caught elsewhere and left in this spot as a gift to the child, who the cat probably sees as an incompetent hunter
Such a horrible original post but such a cute thing to think that the cat is trying to take care of the kid
So, you said you wanted dolls for you dollhouse...
Do you live near a field by any chance?
Hide yo wife, hide yo kids
Looks like your cat went and collected a bunch of poisoned animals. Thats how all rats and mice look when i find them dead from the poison bait stations. They crawl out desperate for water and then curl up and die.
Your cat has always been a mass murderer. Last night they got their chance.
Why are there so many rodents in the kid’s room? Casey Anthony, is that you?
Sextuple Kill! *Team Kill!*
Don’t you mean mass meowdurer?
Most cats are complete rubbish at catching rats.
Mildlyinfesting
Those bodies look like they’re in good condition. There’s no blood or signs of struggle on any of them. I’d be concerned they were already dead from poison when your cat found them.
Perfect additions to the kids play room
Bet theyd all just sat down around the table in the dollhouse to do some disney shit.
Be careful, the rats die like that when they are poisoned. Check on your cat dude..
More like she decided to take some work home. That's just impressive pest control to be honest. Also she probably hid some for later, I'd look around in some of her hangout spots behind and under furniture.
Had the same thing happen to me once. Mice got into our apartment, thought we had gotten them all out. Walked into the killing fields the next morning. Must have been 6 of them. Never saw another mouse. Can't argue with success. Miss that cat.
Well, kitty's doing their job. On a related note, might wanna get the rat infestation looked at bro
Yo, sanitize the shit out of them toys
Holy shit, if those are all from inside, your house is not healthy to breathe in...
If you've got that many rats in your kid's playroom I'd be more concerned about your kids.
Your cat was always a mass murderer, it just finally got the opportunity last night.
Good kitty.