Cute to evil in minutes

[Goingtobeawesome]

So four year old GirlCat is sat on my bedroom window sill calling to the bird on the street light. Now a miaow but a caw caw sound. Very sweet and funny.

Minutes later she runs in with a fucking blackbird in her mouth. Assumed it was dead then heard the poor thing squealing. Got her outside. DH told her to drop it. She did not. Then silly sod opened her mouth and birdy flew off and away to safety.

Cat has two bells already on her collar to give birds a chance. I'm thinking of getting a fuck off megaphone now..

[cozietoesie]

It may have sounded 'sweet and funny' to you but it's the cat equivalent of saying 'Boy - if I get close to you/ever get out there, what I'm going to do to you.....'

It's not really sweet at all.

[Fluffycloudland77]

Blackbird feathers are a bastard to hoover up too.

I think mine eats on the run now, he knows if he brings it home I confiscate it.

[hollinhurst84]

Mine just found a dead bird outside (I knew it was there)
He came running back to me crying about it then ran off in the opposite direction

[Fluffycloudland77]

not a natural born killer then?

[hollinhurst84]

I'm presuming he survived his 4+ years as a stray by doing big eyes at hoomans or getting his females to fetch

[cozietoesie]

Maybe he just likes his prey live and ran off in disgust. Most cats I've known aren't that interested in things which are already dead. Sorry.

[hollinhurst84]

stable cat brought back two rabbits and two mice today. In broad daylight and ate the lot. She's hardcore

[cozietoesie]

Well fair enough - if she actually caught them and all.

(Full size rabbits?)

[hollinhurst84]

Oh she catches them. We are lucky(!) enough to see her bring them back. Yep, not full grown but not baby ones. She brought back a pheasant once, I suspect she didn't kill that

[starsmurf]

My previous cat was already pregnant when I rescued her from a friend whose partner was unkind to the cat. This poor cat was pretty upset at being fed kitten food (due to the pregnancy and lactation) and would frequently turn her nose up at it. So one day, when the kittens were about six weeks old, she refused to eat her food and stalked off outside. That wasn't unusual.

45 minutes later, she miaows at the door, I open it and see some white fluff. My cat came in, turned around and dragged in a rabbit that was larger than her and more than her bodyweight. She must've been a really good hunter.

I have no idea how she managed to get it back to the flat. Unless this was a rather strange rabbit, the closest place she could've caught one was at least 250 yards away. Then she had to get it over/under a high fence, though the garden, up the doorstep and finally take it up a steep flight of stairs to the door to my flat.

Given all that effort, I didn't feel I could take it off her, so I lifted the rabbit with a spade and put it in the bathroom (only non-carpeted room), put my cat and her kittens in there and left them to it.

I believe the whole thing was a way of complaining about her food, as the food she'd refused to eat was rabbit flavour. It was like she was saying " this is what rabbit tastes like, not that rubbish".

I was slightly worried that someone would call the Scottish SPCA, as she was quite thin and the sight of this tiny, skinny cat dragging a full grown rabbit down the street would've made people think I was starving her.

[Goingtobeawesome]

The bird she was cutely talking too wasn't the one she brought home..

[EustachianTube]

Yeah, that funny 'caw caw' sound is full-on cat murdering threat. My killer cat sits on the windowsill doing it to the birds on our bird feeder. She's never brought home one of those though, she generally sticks to ground creatures. Although she did catch and eat a wood pigeon which was the same size as her.

[Goingtobeawesome]

I'll be having words. I did not know it meant I want to kill you .

[cozietoesie]

The bird she'd been 'talking to' would have been well out of reach when she went out but her blood would likely have been stirred.

I'm guessing that the noise you're talking about is the sort of 'K-K-K-K.......' compulsive chattering that they often do when they see a prey they can't get to? (When they're actually on the hunt, cats are deadly quiet and fast in my experience.) Doing that unfortunately doesn't mean they're no good at the real thing.

You'll view her differently from now on I guess?

[cozietoesie]

I should say that she wouldn't be the only predator out there. About two years ago, I saw the next door cat walking across my garden trailing a baby blackbird/starling. (I wasn't close enough to tell precisely.) Last year, a young blackbird was killed by one of the resident magpies and I'd previously had a collared dove killed by a passing raptor.

Watch where you put any food, limit the 'lurking in the shrubbery' possibilities if you can and keep her under curfew at - say - dusk and dawn. (Cats hunt most effectively in low light conditions.)

[Goingtobeawesome]

I won't view her differently at all, why would I? I know she likes to hunt, I don't like it, she has a collar with two bells on to give birds especially a chance but I can't stop her hunting. This was just a thread about my cat talking to a bird through the window making a noise I thought was funny as I hadn't heard her do it before.

She is fed in the kitchen and has fre reign to come and go.

[cozietoesie]

It can be disconcerting is all - to share your life with a purring, loving creature and suddenly being faced with living with an implacable and deadly hunter. (And they can change one to the other so quickly.)

Been there myself.

[Goingtobeawesome]

I suspect both cats are hunters because they were abandoned by their cruel owners and had to fend for themselves. I'm hoping soon they will realise they will always have me at their beck and call be fed and well looked after so don't need to hunt or bring me gifts to thank me as their cute faces are enough thanks.....