Mousing!

[LouisCatorze]

Is there a seasonality to your cats' mousing activity? Ours (young adults) only started mousing last summer, as if it was a new skill they'd learned. Once autumn arrived the mousing stopped but it's just restarted (poor dead mousy found this morning amongst a lot of disturbed shoes!).

I'd rather hoped it would be a one-season wonder but clearly not.

Mice are available all year round but there’s more in summer. Also some cats don’t like going for long in winter.

There's more around in spring and summer. The more serious mouser (who eat them) and foxes will get the autumn and winter ones first. During that time your cats are lazing in front of a fire with a full whiskas tummy.

It would be interesting to do a distribution graph! I think it does probably correlate to the amount of time spent outside. I remember our prolific mouser arriving here, aged almost 2, having been largely an indoor cat. He took to the great outdoors within weeks and never looked back, but we had a variety of moths, slow worms and earthworms (when rainy) brought in while he was honing his skills

Changes in seasons to the cooler weather is a big one. Also the mice like my neighbours garden in the spring so we tend to see a few then too. I make sure dh gives dcat her regular play at these times because it does reduce the mouse incidence.

Thanks for your comments. We do have quite a few foxes in the neighbourhood, so it surprises me that there are any mice left for the cats!

Yes, I guess the warmer weather does mean they spend more of their active time outside.

I thought April was a bit early though. It wasn't even warm yesterday morning.

Earthworms would be a more welcome 'gift' than poor little dead mice.