we got our first 'present' today....im gutted.

[FriggFRIGG]

a lovely little blue tit

cat has a bell,and i know it's their nature,but is there anything i can do to stop this?

[Stopthenonsense]

I'm just getting feathers at the moment.

Dreading the first victim.

[SkipToTheEnd]

Apparently, cats are very good at learning to move slowly to limit the bell. The cat rescue I got my moggys from said a small budgie type mirror works better as it glints in the sun and alerts the birds.

We had countless mice and a baby wood pigeon. The bird lived though thankfully.

[FriggFRIGG]

oh thank you...she is very stealth! will try a mirror!

[BatFlattery]

Both of our cats have collars with bells attached and in the 3 years we've had them they have brought home more bluetits than I can count, 2 robins, numerous mice, hundreds of moths, a nest complete with two tiny tiny chicks and an egg, and a live magpie

Unfortunately it is in their nature - if you have a hunter you just have to accept the occasional 'gift' (or in our case very frequent live offerings).

[bilblio]

Our first "present" was a pork chop (uncooked) DH had left it on the side briefly, the cats got to it so he put it outside in the bin, they brought it back the next morning.
Second present was an out of date bag of mince.
My cats are stupid.

Unfortunately since then we've had mice and birds, mostly dead. Believe me you'll feel terrible but they're better when they're dead!
The mouse took 2 days to catch, with a trap... I'd have rather the cats got it, and it was the 1 weekend DH was away.
The bird was easier to catch but it had been in the house for hours and was that traumatised I didn't expect it to live.

Just remember to give them lost of affection and praise.... or curse them but in a proud, pleasant tone of voice.... or they may bring you something bigger.

My friend was moving house once and was very upset, crying lots. Her cat brought her a bigger gift each day for a week... on the day she moved she found a hare one the kitchen doorstep.
To make matters worse her neighbour when she was saying goodbye said she was upset as the children had found an injured hare, brought it home and were keeping it in a rabbit hutch while it healed. But some hooligan had ripped the front off the rabbit hurt and they assumed from the blood killed the hare!
My friend didn't own up.

Neither of my cats wear collars, They've never kept them on for more than a couple of days, but as they've got older the presents have reduced in quantity, we rarely get them at all... or maybe they feel we don't deserve them now. :)

[SocialButterfly]

My cat is a super hunter, we had our new cream carpet 3 days and he brought in a mouse and proceeded to smear mouse blood all over it - I was not happy!

We get voles most days, mice, and various birds ranging from tidy sparrows to a huge pigeon that was the same size as him! I think if they are hunters you cant do mush about it!

If I spot him running across the grass with a "gift" I lock the cat flap so he cant get in!! Its quite funny to see him ramming his head against the flap wondering why it wont open.

[Vix1980]

My first "present" was actually an old sausage! (the lady next door is a dinner lady so brings home left overs for my cat), from then on we have had a lamb chop, pork chop and half a roast chicken on some occassions, not to mention the numerous mice.

The worst is when we went away for 2 weeks and left them with our nearly blind neighbour, when we returned we found at least 3 dead mice in the living room, a pigeon on the hall landing and 2 1/2 mice outside (1 was headless but i dread to think what had happened to it, just glad that didnt make it through the cat flap) when we asked our neighbour if she had noticed them she said oh yes but i thought it was 1 of their cat toys!

[Elk]

My cat is 16 now and we don't get presents anymore. It is part of being a cat owner as it is in their nature to hunt and kill.

My cat also likes butter so all butter has to be hidden away. I once found dd1 and my cat sharing some butter, dd1 was using a fork and the cat was on the table licking the other side of the butter!!

[mummyplum]

My cat has bought me a fledgling today! Was a lovely gift, but still alive and hid under my bed for an hour. Luckily i managed to put it back outside and its family came back for it. Sure beats the dove he was eating in my bathroom last week, that was a bloodbath! :o

[musicposy]

Vix I thought ours was the only cat like that! I left our cat with my parents when we went away last summer. When we got back there were 3 mice and a rat all lined up beautifully under the dining room table. I wasn't brilliantly keen on the rat, but we don't seem to have had a repeat, thankfully.

Since we got our puppy last year she disposes of the mice before we get to them. I've long since given up trying to wrench them out of her jaws

[bruffin]

We got our ifrst present today as well - It was a bumble bee

[overthehillmum]

my worst gift was a live blackbird that she had dragged in after wounding her wing, it flapped about the whole of my downstairs and covered all the laminated flooring in blood before hiding under the telly....(it was on a stand) being a complete woose I had to get one of my neighbours husbands in to retreive the bird, he put it outside and it did manage to fly away....

We moved into our new house a while ago and for the first 6 months our lovely moggy brought in headless rabbits on a weekly basis, realised she was actually eating the heads when she regurgitated one on our stairs (whole house done in cream carpets), lovely...... In my experience nothing can deter them from killing and maiming, just try and not to leave doors open during the summer and then finding a day old dead headless rabbit under the dining room table.

[Piggles]

Some cats are just born killers. One of mine is just daft, and couldn't catch something if it jumped up and bit her, but the other one just cuts a swathe through local wildlife, regardless of what is dangling off her collar. I just try to keep the doors and windows closed at all times, so she doesn't drag anything inside to play with - it is just so much worse to have to actually be involved in the carnage.

It was after my fluffy little killer trotted in with a wildly flapping snake though, that we got really cautious about checking for cats bearing 'gifts' before we open a door. It was not fun, especially she dropped the very much alive and rather annoyed snake and sat back as if to say: "Do you like it?"

Cue DH running away like a giant chicken, and me trying to snake wrangle with the aid of the broom and fireplace poker. While DH cowered, and I struggled, bloody cat hopped up on the sofa and watched indulgently as if to say: "Ah, my humans are so excited by my gift. Screaming and hopping about and everything... I must remember to get them another one..."

[follyfoot]

One of the hazards of having cats unfortunately. Our three all got old together so we no longer have any sadly. Have to say though I dont miss the all too frequent (even daily at some times of year) mouse/shrew/vole/baby rabbit/grown up rabbit/mole/bat/bird/frog or the dead pheasant wedged in the catflap

[differentnameforthis]

I remember one time babysitting for a friend who had a cat who liked to bring her presents...(I had previously gotten rid of mice & birds for her)

I suddenly heard this 'thump thump' ...... 'thump thump'. At first I thought it was the children messing around when they should be asleep...I got up to go see them, looked down & there was a LIVE frog!

HATE frogs!

Took me ages to get it out side, I had to 'guide' it with a dustpan & it kept trying to jump at me

[stinkyfluffycat]

I don't think there's much you can do to stop them.. luckily I have stupid cats who generally only ever catch their own furballs. Although one of them did bring back one of those little nets with a ball of fat & seeds in it that people put out for birds. She was quite proud of that..

[myermay]

mine brought in a magpie the other day, it was still alive! i've also had two wood pigeons, i have no idea how he catches such large birds. Doesn't help i have bird phobia

[unclefester77]

you can feed them a larger meal at tea, they like hunting at night and it seems to stop my smallest cat a bit. It levels off as they get older. But TBH this is what they do, and if you have a killer there's not much you can do about it...

[SuburbanDream]

My dopey boy cat brought home a baby blue tit the other day. He carried it very carefully into the back garden and sat there looking at me as if to say "what am I supposed to do now?" I thought it was dead but then it started flapping about and I managed to catch it and hide it in a bush out the front of the house. Hope it survived , it looked ok, just minus a bit of it's tail!

[senua]

ROFL @ OP complaining of being "gutted". Just thank goodness that you are not a blue tit.

[purplepidjin]

My cat used to bring presents (now departed thanks to a car ) always alive

There was the blackbird who's head he proceeded to enjoy all over DP's bare foot...

And the baby rat he brought back soft-mouthed so that he and other cat could play with it... I managed to pin him down with one hand, the other one covered by a plastic bag to take the rat off him. Then i had to yell for DP to come and put some pressure on his jaws to make him drop the rat. Then the rat magically came back to life, jumped out of my hand while i screamed and scuttled off behind the fridge. We had to let the cat catch it again and repeat the whole rigmarole, this time with me prepared for the damn thing to wriggle!

The whole thing told us that there was a big rat problem outside our house (urban area, chinese take-away and big name corner shop in the immediate surroundings) so luckily it pretty much stopped when the big name shop called in pest control

[purplepidjin]

Oh, and I always made sure that the presents were properly dead and disposed of. Rats are cannibals so a rat with a broken leg will only go on to be dinner for it's mum, dad, sisters, brothers, cousins...