My cat is 'fighting' with a bee (or wasp, I'm not sure), will it hurt him?

[SchroSawMargeryDaw]

I would seperate them but I am terrified of bees and wasps.

Get a glass, get the bee in it and then slip a piece of paper or thin cardboard in between the paper and the wall or whatever. By holding the paper over the glass, the bee can then be transported safely anywhere. Works with spiders and others as well.

In between the glass and the wall.

(I'm typing over a cat here so you'll have to forgive me.)

I'm guilty of much terrible typing due to Rice sitting on me :)

Can you come over to Rice's thread and explain how you enforce the no scratching in unauthorised places rule please?

We got the bee out btw, turned out it was still there the next morning so I had someone remove it with a cornetto box! It was actually a bumble bee.

However, last night my MIL killed one that was in my living room. :( I actually feel racked with guilt for not stopping her in time.

I'm scared of them but I don't want them hurt! :(

It sounded like a bumble from what you said.

Don't feel racked with guilt. Just concentrate on getting to know bees and learning how to cope with them. Bees are pretty bumbling around and are easily dealt with if you can hold your nerve. Once you've dealt with one yourself (see above) you should find that it gets easier each time.

Well after I seen it's stripes I managed to sit in the living room with it for ages until I could get someone to get it out and even showed DS it (he's only little and loves bugs and stuff).

I'm not so bad with the stripeys, it's the plain black ones and wasps. :(

Thank you for the advice and hand holding! I have become a total wimp. :o

You only see the stripes when you're up close and it's still so well done for getting near it - and particularly well done for showing DS. Getting him to be calm with insects is a good thing especially if you're antsy with them.

You're not being a wimp if you're not used to them. And pretty well no-one likes wasps even if they don't mind insects in general. Wasps are plain mean - and I'd have no hesitation in swatting one of them even if I would never swat a bumble.

A wasp was raided last week in here by my DGM, we didn't even really know what it was, it was over an inch long and massive and shiny and evil and flying at everyone. I've never seen anything like that in this country before.

I'm not so bad with bumble bees, no idea why they are less offensive tbh.

DS loves bugs and I want it to stay like that, he especially loves spiders and was going mad for one that I caught to put out yesterday, he throws a tantrum once it's out of the house!

We had a tame spider in my last house. (Called Albert and lived in a corner of the sitting room window.) When I came to this house, they were trotting around the floor, the size of small mice, but I drew the line at that (didn't want to squish one underfoot when going to the loo in the night) so moved them on.

We tend to live in old houses so you have to get used to such things.

Yikes, big spiders!

I swear the bugs, spiders etc in this house are on steroids. They are all huge!

This is an old cottage flat and we're a fair bit out from the city and surrounded by trees and the country fields and farms are about a 10 minute walk away. I suspect that's the problem here!

HUGE!

If DS likes bugs and you live in the country, see if you can get him up and out real early one summer morning and you might catch a field spider's web strung between bushes, all covered with dew and sparkling in the early sunlight. You'll never look at spiders the same way again - and the memory will likely stay with DS for ever.

How early? On sunny days he has a tendency to wake up at around 5am some days.

I love spiders, I just don't like the shiny ones. :) I took him to Amazonia (rainforest wildlife thing near us) and took him to the handling session and we got to hold Madagascan hissing cockroaches (they were amazing) and other weird things. :)

Dawn. Or at any rate, early enough for the dew not to have evaporated.

Dawn at the moment is just before 5:30 am, thanks for that I will definitely do that. :)

DP will probably hide though, his fear is spiders.