If your cat was a hunter...

[afterdropshock]

Our two young cats are very good hunters. They wear bells but have still caught two birds this week. They are two years old now. Will they calm down as they get older?

*now has

Ours have only just turned one and are ridiculously proficient, especially the semi-Siberian. Found a dead squirrel on the drive with a half chewed face yesterday - yuck.

I'm amazed that two young cats could take down a seagull, OP! They are big, scary buggers. Are your two girls? In my experience they tend to be better hunters than boys and my 20 year old managed a bird a few weeks ago. But they do tend to calm down in middle age.

My cat brought something in every day at one point. She’s 3 now and things seem to have calmed down, thankfully!

Ours are kept in from late afternoon and although they do catch the occasional bird it's very few. The RSPB recommends keeping them in at night, it apparently cuts down the amount of bird deaths by 75%.

My mixed bengal 1 year old is an avid hunter and I hate it. She brings in birds, mice, slow worms and frogs. I don’t let her out early in the morning and she’s in by 6pm. She has two bells and is a very fast cat. When she’s in I feel much happier as I know she isn’t chasing some poor creature!

I think bells are utterly cruel. Imagine having such exquisitely sensitive hearing and being plagued by that high pitched sound at the slightest movement.

Mine are hunters. The best is aged 5. Shows no sign of slowing. She brought in a skinned, headless baby mouse yesterday it's usually mice. Not that such prey requires a skilful hunter!

think that's mistaking how cats hear; just because they can hear slight sounds doesn't mean they are over-sensitive to sharp sounds, or have intolerance for constant tinkling sounds

You can't go with the line "Bells make no difference to kill rate because they learn to move around without ringing the bells" and "bells are insufferably cruel to their sensitive little ears". Can't both be equally true.

My cats show no interest or reaction to bells, except to identify each other (which is why I like bells too)

Yeah the seagull was last year when they were 1. Boy and girl cat. Young seagull. That was when we bought the bells.

My previous Bengal pair were horrors. In our last house we had the Killing Bench where they would take their victims so that the other birds wouldn’t dive bomb them. It normally looked like an explosion in a pillow factory under there and had to be pressure washed weekly. The brown one would have loved where we live now and would probably have been dragging home sheep. The silver one was older by this time but still managed to drape disembowelled rabbits over my very la-di-da neighbour’s terrace.
With the current masters, one brings in at least 3-4 rodents and/or baby bunnies a day, and the other one unsuccessfully chases flies.

My cat is 13 with a bad leg and still brought in a live mouse and set it free to run about my bedroom at 11pm the other night, I thought she'd given up as we hadn't had one for a while!

She also wears a collar with a bell.

No sign of slowing down aged 11. Thankfully no birds. Mice, voles, moles and rabbits are daily occurrences.

I've got a brother/sister pair. We live in South London and they love to try and catch the pigeons. No luck though! My boy caught two mice when they were in the house (thankfully gone now!) First one was alive and well and he was playing with it! We managed to get it off him and let it loose many miles away 😂 sadly, the last one he had obviously scared to death and proudly showed it off to us!
His sister brought me a feather once 🤷🏻‍♀️
They're three and outdoor cats during the day, in over night

Mine did. Her record was 5 birds in a day. Every day she would leave mouse guts, a rat, pigeon or some other creature. She hasn't done this since she was 9 and we moved house (shes 15 now).