Did the cat catch a mouse or was it my imagination?

[MadameDD]

My cat the other night (at 1am, thanks cat) - woke me by clattering around downstairs in our house - thought it was wind/burglar but no probably the cat. He's locked in at night - the cat.

He then came up the stairs to the second part (past the first landing and I can't recall if he had anything in his mouth - like a mouse - thought his mouth was open and carrying something - because I screamed and he then ran downstairs and hid under the dining room table and then ran and hid under the IKEA church bench in the box room - his favourite hiding place!

We did have mice in the kitchen a few months ago, he caught one, think they're coming in from neighbours or garden, saw droppings, put out traps, caught nothing, he caught one.

what's the odds on the mouse being back and he got it? and either ate it or it ran away/escaped?

DH looked everywhere I couldn't look and said he found nothing. I have read up on cats having a mad midnight spree - excitement.

HELP!

He's eaten it. Or taken the corpse away and hidden it under an item of furniture.

Sometime you will see it again. This will not be nice. Sorry.

Mine hides them in drawers, under duvets and one was hidden in my slipper.
My old cat would leave them in her food bowl.
On the plus side they don't always tear them apart, I've seen a few that didn't have visible wounds.
Keep dustpan handy for scooping

Mice can be fairly plentiful, so your cat will have access to them regularly. All scenarios are equally likely - He had a mouse and ate every single scrap, although in my experience, they usually leave some of the internal organs which I then find by stepping on them.

He had a live mouse which escaped and is now hidden somewhere in your house.

He had a mouse which he killed and the corpse is hidden somewhere, but don't worry, he'll bring it out to play with again when you next have company to show them how clever he is; otherwise the presence of a large number of flies in a few days will alert you to it's presence somewhere you haven't looked yet.

It's just a feature of having cats. The only time I find it upsetting is when they bring in the alive but mangled mice and I have to decide whether it is kinder to let him get on with it, kill it quickly myself, or take it off them, put it outside somewhere and hope that it recovers.

Thanks... but the only thing I'm unsure of - is did I think I saw the mouse and I saw it - 1am - bleary eyed etc... or was it just him creeping about the house being a midnight ninja? I've hardly noticed him catching mice, the odd bird and frog but that's it and certainly not eating them - he's well fed.

I do recall a few years back sharing a house with an ex-boyfriend and 2 other cats and the ex-boyfriend often had holes in jeans etc and would often leak pound coins which would fall under the sofa cushions - one day - no idea why - I was putting my hand down the back of the cushion area of the sofa and my hand came across a mouse skeleton - maybe with hair or not - I screamed - can't recall if ex-boyfriend was around or not and of course one of the bloody cats had brought it in and dropped it down there... they were lethal mouse killers.

I really can't face me or DD finding the dead mouse...

Sounds like he caught a mouse and gobbled it up. On the bright side at least he didn't leave it for you deal with.

Our cat used to just leave the heads sometimes, other times he'd eat the whole thing. One of the joys of owning a cat.

Any chance that I could borrow him for a day or two OP?
We have mice in the shed (bastards even got in the fridge and ate my bread) and our resident moggy is completely useless.
I'll pay transport costs and everything.

What kind of mouse was it?

We had house mice and the council told us there is never only one.
We tried to trap them humanly but ended up having to put poisen down as they were eating our electrical wires and were creating a fire risk.
It was one of the most traumatising experiences of my life (I was ten) we had dozens and dozens of dead mice turn up every morning for about a fortnight.

maggienolia - sadly he's not good with strangers - he's friendly but he'd probably hide on your house and not bother catching anything. He hid underneath the IKEA church bench for 2 weeks when I got him at 5 months old...

Tabby cats or farm cats are apparently excellent mousers - or maybe spot a 'bruiser' un-neutered tom cat and grab him!

Furrytoebean - that's the thing - a few years ago it was field mice - from old church yard/church - now built on. But now no idea - looks grey but I did spot a dark coloured mouse a couple of years ago in our bedroom.

I blame the neighbours for getting an extension but also their garage used to have a dodgy door where I know there were mice as my old cat caught them in there.

When we moved the large American-style fridge freezer to clean behind it one time, we found a mummified mouse that one or other of the cats had brought in. We suspect it was still alive when it crawled under the fridge as none of the cats could get behind it. There was no sign it was there until we moved things.

Hope you find a corpse rather than bits of a dead mouse.

my cat used to bring all sorts in - mice, frogs, birds. even a huge wood pigeon once that was flapping around my dining room. once he was running around the bedroom in the middle of the night so i switched the light on to see what he was doing and he was chasing a mouse. i screamed and stood up on the bed whilst my boyfriend chased the cat and the mouse all around the bedroom. luckily he seems to have grown out of hunting and would rather just roll around in the bath in the early hours of the morning instead!

and my hand came across a mouse skeleton - maybe with hair or not - I screamed GRIM

I've had the mummified mouse with fly cocoon cases within it, the half-mouse, the mouse with the distressing abdominal wound and several alive and trying to get away varieties. And we suspect there may be another mummified under the fridge freezer, still not dared to check that out.

And of course the birds.

OP I hope you only imagined it...

Update - back from work yesterday - happily eating, DD in bed and DH who was WFH yday (unlike me as Monday is my WFH day usually) said "I didn't want to tell you as..." - apparently he'd spent part of the day with the cat chasing a mouse and half catching it and then it went behind furniture which cat couldn't get to... cat then went out.

So I was at home, happily eating dinner, and then I saw out of the corner of my eye in the kitchen the mouse dash from under the cooker to under the fridge - we want to get our kitchen redone soon and this has given us incentive - so I'm guessing there's a family. We do have snap traps, and humane ones as when I stupidly mentioned this mouse problem to my mum a few months back she thought I was 'cruel' and brought round a humane trap.... I did notice the mouse peeked its nose/head out from under the fridge and thank god it's only a mouse - but house rather than field mouse.

So now traps baited with cheese - we tried Nutella and peanut butter before and the mice didn't go for them. A few years ago when there was one upstairs - god knows how it got in - I noticed my cracker crisps had gone... so maybe will try those and also a few years ago when I rented I noticed chocolates gone too... - that was when I didn't have a cat but had a vegan animal rights loving flatmate...!

Cat was oblivious - upstairs asleep - more tired than usual probably due to 'hunting'. He's a chocolate point Siamese though - I thought these were excellent hunters - obviously not and a waste of the money I paid for him! (joke!).

Suggested I feed cat less to DH so he is more tempted to catch the mice and got a look from him.

Traps set last night but so far no bodies.....

Our cat left one 'unwrapped' under the Christmas tree once. Another time he left just a tail on the playroom floor. It was so tiny we didn't notice it until our crawling baby tried to put it in her mouth. We still get mice now and again (cat sadly long deceased) and we use snap traps with bits of Mars bars on them. They love the stuff!

MadameDD our very first cat was the offspring of a farm cat. Inside the house he was the sweetest, most loving cat you could hope for. However, the minute he went outside he was a mass murderer.

My parents house backed on to a wild area near a railway line, and there was also a sawmill. We had every variety of bird, mice, rats, vole and also rabbit in the garden and house. Most were whole but some had been chewed/just innards. My mum used to go spare but all the moggies we had were as bad.

You can't win with cats. Our last cat was a Russian Blue - parents had a rat in their compost bin and he'd just sit and watch it. Completely useless .

I do recall my mum's and my childhood cat, a male tabby - we lived near a council dump which has been redeveloped (yes I know) and some waste land (sort of wild field like?) too and this cat regularly caught rats throughout my childhood dead and alive and would eat them leaving apparently the tails and feet in a neat little pile nearby so my mum says... YUCK.

There was a passageway for dustmen refuse collectors which ran along the back of the house and once access was refused there as well as dump was redeveloped the rats were far less.

This is a cat that in almost his whole life had no booster injections and only visited the vet once when a rat bit him and it got infected compared to my other now sadly deceased cats (lots various) and mine - well he fights a lot with his neighbour fremeny and until recently was on the losing end!

Madame DD, ours is a brown tabby as well and if you said they had the reputation for being the best hunters I would believe you. She only has to freeze on the spot - outside, obviously - and she merges totally with the background, completely chameleon like. And allegedly females are better hunters than males, perhaps because they have to demonstrate technique to kittens?

As a kitten my cat was useless at hunting. Her mum brought live mice to her and she let them get away, she was so rubbish. Her mum was all eye-rolly, which is odd in a cat but she so clearly looked disgusted... photo is mum and the Mouse That Got Away (hooray) Sadly kitten turned 1 and simultaneously pulled up her Big Girl Pants and developed proper skills (boo).

Suggested I feed cat less to DH so he is more tempted to catch the mice and got a shock look from him. I wouldn't do this, as the end result will likely be sicked up mouse remains. Ain't pretty.