Why DO cats make that funny noise when they're looking at a bird?

[HeinzSight]

?

It's cat speak for 'prepare to meet thy maker, tweetie pie'....

it always reminds me of the noise in the film predator

lol bella.

@ bella

why do they do it though, it's surely drawing attention to themselves?

The sound comes from the movement of the jaws as they do the "killing bite" on the back of the animals neck. So they're just practising.

How lovely.

ooooooooooooooh, uuuuuuuuuuuuurgh

but thank you banana

Don't worry HeinzSight, the birds can't hear it when they're on the outside of the glass that my cat is on the inside of.....

TMI banana - off to have scary dreams about large lethal bananas doing their killing bite on poor unsuspecting creatures....

Message withdrawn

fruitbat, good answer! Thank you.

remeinds me of hannibal lecter doing his liver and chianti bit

Oh thank you very much pointydog.

This thread should have an 18 rating

pmsl pointy v funny

Machine gun impression.

I seem to recall reading that cats are losing their ability to kill quickly with one bite, some kind of genetic change, has anyone else heard this? Mine also makes a wierd growling noise if he has a mouse in his mouth, even when we are all in bed and not trying to rescue it!

Our cat is nearly 7 months and she still doesn't make this noise.
However, my old lovely boy cat who went to the cattery in the sky years ago ALWAYS did this.
Is she just not destined to be a good hunter? prays
She doesn't even do it with flies. She will just watch, hunch down and pounce!

Do you mean the grow sort of noise, I thought it was just ours that did that?

Not the growling noise. Ours does that when it's got the nose in the dish too quick and I take the bowl away to chop it up finer....she will growl. Especially if it's fresh meat or fish.

I mean the 'chattering' type noise that cats make when behind a window, watching the birds or hunting for flies. They sit bolt still, eyes fixed and just the jaw moves, making a 'clicking' sound.

Kinda like the subterranean killer in the Creep film

None of my current lot do the chattering noise, my little girl who was run over a few months ago did. Yet No2 cat is the better hunter. So I don't think it is anything to do with hunting skill.

I do think it sounds like a machine gun impression though.

Yes ours growl for fresh food but will also growl after they have caught their prey.

Will listen for the other noise.

i have 3 dcats and none of them do teh machine gun but they all do the growl and are very good hunters (if you like that sort of thing) i want to hear the clicking now though !

Oh, I've never had a chattering noise from mine. More of a whinging noise that sounds like the sort of thing a cat would think was alluring, iyswim.

See here for cat chattering noise
Mine does it all the bloody time.

whoo. My cat doesn't chatter in quite such a clackety way, but yes, that's it.

How odd, we had heaps of cats growing up, but I don't remember any of them doing that noise at all. They were African cats so maybe a different language

However they did make a lovely greeting sound - hard to describe, a bit like a "chirrup" - that I have never heard any cat here make...