Owners of hunter cats - I need your opinion!

[Pascha]

What do you do when your cat brings a mouse home and lets the bastard loose indoors and then loses interest? Are you an exterminator or humane catch and releaser? Assuming you can't get it straight away how do you go about catching it?

And if you become aware of said fucker only because you've spotted a tail diving behind the fridge/heard a scratching sound in the fireplace/observed your cats interested staring at one spot but being too stupid to corner and catch it again, what is your go-to plan of action and equipment?

We've had 3 incidents in the last 2 weeks and I'm getting quite fed up with it. My cats are useless once it arrives indoors.

All sugfeations welcomed with open arms...

Mine is a hunter and this is the drill.. I scream so loud he drops it and runs away. If my scream hasn't finished Mickey off he goes into a cardboard box and put back in the garden.

My cat is a regular hunter. If he brings in one when we’re awake then we catch and release (usually DH just grabs it by the tail). Usually he plays with them in the hall so we open the front door and try and shepherd it towards there.

We shut all doors at night (cat has access to kitchen, dining room and hall and stairs) to stop them getting in the living room and bedrooms. The night time ones are usually eaten just leaving the odd bit of guts and blood.

I am a dab hand at catching live mice with a dustpan and brush. Over the years I've had mice, rats, glis glis, a squirrel, lots of birds (I normally use a tea towel for those) and goldfish, despite no one having a pond nearby.
Pretty much everything either alive or dead, goes in the dustpan and brush.
On the rare occasion one is running free, one of the other cats will take up the hunt.
Apart from one time, when a proper stubborn mouse was running free in my bathroom for over a week. Despite all the cats taking up watch in there. I had to go out and buy a trap for him. And then the bloody trap didn't finish him off so I had to do it myself!

Boycat is fond of eating them in front of us. Starts at the head and crunches his way downwards. The noise 🤢.

DH calls the place where they deposit their offerings to us the Tree of Death since so many sad little carcasses, some whole, some just feet and a beak, are left for our enjoyment.

After large breakfast, I noticed cat playing with large dead vole in garden. 10 minutes later cat is curling up at top of cat tree, behind tree. 10 minutes later cat is spewing large breakfast & vole body parts onto tv.

Not my favourite kitty today. Not at all. Ruddy stank.

An undigested entire corpse is pretty easy to deal with in comparison.

More rats than mice around here so bigger and easier to catch in the rat pot (plastic plant pot and card). We do the shepherding pincer movement moving towards an open door using prices of card from the big boxes of cat food to guide them out.

One cat brought in a small live parrot. Parrot rescue were lovely when they collected it but it died because we hadn't been able to catch it quickly enough for the antibiotics to work.

Pieces

DD is a brilliant mouse catcher, but when she's not around we have a 'humane' trap in which I put a little chocolate. Mouse goes in, can't get out but has a treat. Then release in overgrown bit of garden and hope cat doesn't get it again (they've usually forgotten about it anyway).

Birds are different. They're usually dead by the time they've been brought inside so easy to dispose of, but once in a blue moon there's a live one. DH dealt with the last one. He told the at to give it to him and, amazingly, the cat did. He let it go i the overgrown bit of the garden. It did fly away.

I have TripTraps, which I bait with raisins when Dcat strikes. If the mouse survives until I check the trap and looks OK, I release it at the park.

If the mouse is visibly injured, I let Dcat finish it off. I'm memorising "bag and stomp" as a humane execution technique.

@VitoCorleoneOfMNMafia

I'm memorising "bag and stomp" as a humane execution technique.

Rolling a small bird or a mouse up in a paper bag and then a sharp blow or two to the head end with a stout stick works pretty well. If you stamp you might get a mess on your shoe.

I love cats but the amount of wildlife they must kill is staggering.

My neighbours cat has a penchant for baby rabbits.

Do bells on collars help ?

Someone above mentioned field mice - no wonder they're nearly extinct - I believe they are protected now ?

Is it Victoria in Australia that's banned all cats from roaming outdoors due to the mass killings of local wildlife?

Bells on collars don't help. Mine is now shut out at night as that's when she hunts. She brings them in alive to play with so they frequently escape and she wanders off. I tend to be able to catch mice in my hands and throw them outside (I'm not bothered by mice) but she has a habit of bringing small rats in and they're really hard to catch so now she has a one way cat flap!

Before I put a collar on mine with a bell she slaughtered everything. It has really cut down her kill rate.

I've always been scared that I'll miss with a stick or not hit hard enough. I have issues with gross motor control, throwing and catching balls, that kind of thing.

OMG this thread is totally grossing me out!! One of the myriad of reasons why my two rescue girls are indoor cats!!

I've been very lucky - none of my previous three boys had any interest in hunting really, and my two before that were indoors too. My ginger fella did bring me a cheese wrapper, a cigarette packet and a used teabag.... I nearly shat myself because I thought teabag was a mouse!!

I use a food waste bag for the bag-and-stomp technique and then put it in the food waste!

They don't need to catch it once the bring it home for you. It's then your problem 😂

I catch and release but I've had the sofa turned upside down in the past to catch one 😂

Our previous cats never gave us this amount of trouble, that's for sure. One was too dim to catch a fly and never hunted at all. The other liked to hunt at the local farm and nearby canal but we never saw presents so I assume he ate what he caught.

These two are a pretty independent mother and son who looked after themselves for some weeks or months when they were abandoned when family moved on without them. They would not cope with being indoor cats and are used to hunting for food. Even 3 years on, they still get incredibly edgy if they can't go out.

You have a very handsome cat!

I usually team up with the cats to catch the mouse in a bucket or washing up bowl, depending on where it all kicks off.

Some on another thread said she uses kitchen roll insides with tape on one end and leaves them in strategic places as mice like small hiding places.