Cat bringing mice and birds in house?

[The3Bears]

Need some advice desperately we have 2 cats one 1 yr old female and a 14 week old male, recently the female has been awful staying out alot and then a couple of weeks ago brought in a dead bird and tonight shes brought in a LIVE mouse dp is downstairs trying to catch it.

But now Im left with what to do I am currently 13 weeks pregnant and have a ds who is 5 i cant cope with her bringing in live mice etc i know cats do this but i have lived with cats all my life and my others have simply left them on the door step etc. I love my cat but I cant risk all of our health for this as its just too much now any advice?

Put bells on the cats :)

She has a collar in fact shes had 5 in the past 2 months as she constantly pulls them off i just dont know what to do with her now :(

Bell on cat's collar.
Don't let her out at dawn and dusk (when they do most of their hunting)

But ultimately some cats are just very prone to this sort of behaviour and there's not a lot you can do about it.

You might find it gets better when you are no longer pregnant - my cat gets vey 'protective' / clingy when I'm pregnant, perhaps yours is trying to feed you up?

I wouldn't worry too much about your families health, a couple of dead birds / traumatized mice aren't the end of the world.

Yes i am being slightly paranoid over the health thing but I dont think im going to have a choice dp is still downstairs looking for mouse cat has dissapeared leaving it in the house!

she has bell on collar, shes done this before at 2pm I just think she likes to annoy me, like the idea about her trying to fatten me up

I just have never seen a cat do this much hunting before its abit of a shock tbh, after living with a cat all my life.

Don't have any advice, but my cat is worse! She brings things into the house ALL the time - a couple of years ago, it was three birds in one evening! Now I just don't let her have the run of the house at night -the catflap is in the door outside from our utility room so she (and any little presents), don't get any further.

I have gone as far as not letting my female cat out of downstairs kitchen/diner all day. It keeps the presents in one place and if I need to I can set a mouse trap overnight.

I've only had male cats before who caught the odd mouse but my female is a terror. With lots of wailing and waving of arms when I see her bring them in she is starting to eat them on the doorstep.

Dh works from home not always bothering to get dressed and was once bitten on his big toe by a confused looking mouse that had appeared from under the desk!

My boys are amateurs. So far we've had two tiny frogs, a vole or shrew a couple of worms and a few leaves.
My sisters cats OTOH bring home pigeons, a duck, rabbits and once, a very irritated magpie.
I am scared witless of birds. One cat we had brought home a starling. I locked myself in my bedroom and stayed there till DH came home from work

Saturday morning, jumped out of the shower just before the bathroom flooded, frozen outside pipe. DH up a ladder shouting for buckets, hot water bottles, string, foil (what did he need that for!), me trying to keep a straight face when DH still up a ladder got showered in my shower water. DC (darling cat) decides this is the ideal moment to deposit a live mouse on the kitchen floor. She chased it under some cupboards, reversed out with it in her mouth so I picked up cat and mouse and put them outside, she dropped the mouse, I grabbed it's tail and took it for a ride, hopefully it's building a new life for itself well away from DC. This was live mouse number 2, I've decided not to get paranoid about them, I'm going to get some humane traps just incase she loses one, if the're not nesting in your house it shouldn't be that hard to get rid of them should it?????

Well dp didnt find the mouse but it was only in the utility room and there was a small hole where a pipe that leads outside or under the utility room (but not the rest of the house as its just concrete under utility room and you cant get under it) was so it must have gone through this, hoping it has ran out anyway, we put the cat in there tonight and she hasnt even bothered so it cant be there anymore, not seen any droppings or heard anything at all.

As for the cat she has stayed away all day and then come in now so I am going to go to craft shop tomorrow and buy some bells and sew a couple more onto collar, she will sound ridiculous but anything that stops her from bringing live mice in is fine by me, she is not going out after 6pm and if she does she can stay out. So hopefully this will be the last, cant believe some of the things your cats have brought it

One of the joys of owning a cat that goes out! It is live prey that are the greatest challenge. Mice will usually be shooed into a wellie, which you can then upturn and carry away, but we had a field mouse (so cute) who managed to hide behind the dog's box for 24 hours before I could liberate him. One cat used to walk along the top of the beech hedge scooping fledglings out of the nest. Another caught birds when we lived in a top floor flat. The best was the Burmese who would fish in the neighbour's pond for frogs. Did you know they scream quite loud? When ds was about six he said, 'Mummy the cat has brought in two frogs - stuck together!' Should I have done the 'cats are hunters' talk before explaining that 'frogs do it'? I can't remember, I was laughing too much.
I'm not convinced about bells though, I have bought big, bigger, biggest and they just lose their collars.
One tip, mice like plumbing pipes but can be deterred by wrapping silver foil round them.

I have three female cats, they are buggers for catching things. Since they stopped being indoor/house cats in March last year, I've had presents consisting of 4 rats, 14 mice (two live which I caught and freed), and 3 birds.

The third bird was just today, cat brought it in very pleased with herself and started trying to pluck it before I scooped it away from her and disposed.

Only one will keep a collar with a bell on for longer than an hour before getting stuck in it or flinging it off. Little sods.