What 'present' has your cat brought you? (light hearted)

[Startingagainandagain]

My cat just came into the kitchen while I was having my lunch chirping proudly and proceeded to spit out a huge live fly in front of me....

Of course I congratulated her on her hunting skills and then promptly got rid of the fly in the garden...

What lovely gifts have you received from your cats?

Many, many moons ago [about 40 years!] ours used to regularly bring us empty cigarette packets. We couldn't work our where on earth she was getting them from. Bless her.

Years ago my cat used to bring presents in and meow loudly until we thanked her. One night she sounded muffled.....went to check and she had a mouthful of rabbit tail!!! No rabbit thankfully 😂
Our big ginger was a master hunter.....he left a rat underneath the trampoline. Guess who ran it over with the lawnmower 🤢🤢😂😂

We're letting our cat out soon after she gets spayed and I'm so nervous about the 'presents'.

We live near a river so she'll have a buffet of rats and lord knows what else to catch.

How do you get a live mouse out of the house...and how do you clean and sanitise anything these presents may have touched?!

One of the good things about having a catio is that I don’t get unwanted gifts and the birds are safe.
In my pre catio days one of my dear old cats used to bring me elastic bands and twigs which she then always dropped in the kitchen sink. No idea why.
One of the other lovely girls brought in a live grass snake and left it in the bathroom and I was completely terrified as have a phobia of snakes so I had to shut it in there and wee in the garden until my husband came home to remove it.

A large rotten fillet of fish
Spiders, big ones to release alive in the house
A used serviette
Mice, lots of live ones released back into wild. We once had one who took up residence in a rolled up rug in the kitchen. I caught it and threw it out, next time I opened the patio door it came back in right past the cat that just looked at it! It went straight home to the rug

I came home to this handsome fellow in my bathroom a couple of weeks ago. He was very cross.

A childhood cat brought home a breaded fillet of fish.

My late first black cat used to simply bring me a tiny liver or heart and leave it in the house for me. Some kind of satanic thing I guess, but marvellously skilful dissection I had to admit!

Ticks on him around his neck that I have to use a tick pen to get rid of. Today it was 4!

Regular mice and birds

favourite more niche gifts were the mole and another occasion a stoat - both alive 🙈

Parents cat used to sit with a live bird in the morning waiting for the first person to get up. Then he would release the bird only to kill it within a second.
Think he was trying to teach us how to hunt.
But starting mornings with a cat sitting with his prey and fully knowing what will happened was just pure terror.

Current Maine Coons are not into hunting - only one small mouse about a year ago.
Had two mogies who were expert bird hunters - whoa it was like coming home to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre!
One ginger chap never killed anything but I had mice, snakes, a giant flying bug...I was much braver then would just catch them and chuck them out the door.

Worst was a few days dead clearly decomposing whole magpie. Brought it to the kitchen window and ds the idiot opened the window.

Much less since she's got older but she can still catch a sparrow from the air!

Mine loves to bring in grass or sticks and sometimes worms. We just thank him and chuck it back out when he isn't looking. 😂 he will chase flies and birds but thankfully not had anything bigger than a worm 🪱

Until we moved we’d receive weekly dead mice deliveries to the front door.

Full mice, half a mouse. Full shrews, a battered up bird. The youngest cat brought home a live frog a few days ago. I used to scoop up the mice etc but we’ve got Red Kites that fly over our house so I started leaving them out and soon enough they, along with magpies would swoop down and take them. I see it as my little way of contributing to the circle of life 💀

I'm not sure how stories of allowing your domestic pets to kill native wildlife (some of it endangered) is 'light hearted'.

Because most people don't want mice ar rats in their houses and cats are very good at reducing the numbers of those. It's mutually beneficial.

Yes, I also do this, and yesterday, for the first time, I actually saw a magpie fly down, pick up the dead mouse wholesale and fly off with it!.
The cat brought in a live bat a few weeks ago, which I managed to catch in my mouse pot. The wings were a bit damaged, so I contacted the local wildlife rescue who put me in touch with a (luckily nearby) bat rescue lady. Upshot was, his wings mended and she eventually released him back into the woods behind our house!

Aw that’s sweet! Let’s just hope he doesn’t bring it back in again! And same only recently did I see a red kite swoop past my dining room window and off he flew with it. I don’t mind leaving the whole ones out for them but can’t even bare to look at the ones he’s eaten half of. Not sure they want them either!

One of my current cats is an avid rodent catcher and brings in at least one a night. He's also brought in 7 very neatly killed squirrels so far.
A former cat when we lived in a city centre with the sort of terraced houses with a small yard and a narrow lane between your yard and the one behind, found them a perfect way to get in and out of people's kitchens very quickly as he could skitter along the walls. We got a ham sandwich, cooked sausages, a gammon steak, and other delicacies.
Conversely, the heron left us a carp in the middle of the lawn recently. It was very confusing when I went to let the chickens out and there was a big fish there.

You can’t really clean and sanitise anything they’ve touched, well you can to a degree say if it’s a floorboard or where it’s been put but this all depends on where else it’s been and if you knew about it.

As per PP’s cats often love to leave gifts under things… to be found. I think they just forget about them. Found a mouse down back of sofa (right down into it below cushions area) but it was long dead just a skeleton.

A dead baby rabbit in my spare room from my boy. Multiple live mice, one of which jumped onto my table to eat my flowers as I watched TV one day.

My girl (RIP) had a thing for dish sponges. She brought me back multiple sponges that weren't mine.

Unsure who it was but the best was a dead robin, under the Xmas tree....

My parents cat once caught 2 racing pigeons 😬

my 2 cats aren’t natural hunters - things they’ve brought us include a cooked chicken wing, a couple of cocktail sausages, and 2 fat balls from someone’s bird feeder 😂

My most successful mouse/vole captures are putting inner from a roll of wrapping paper in the hall. (Or wherever mouse has been gifted)
9/10 time we find the cat at an end of it with the mouse inside.
squeeze ends closed and deposit outside

Weve had countless mice and birds. The biggest was a crow same size as the cat. We have a big cat flap so the dog can use it too and she dragged the thing in alive 😱 managed to set it free again thankfully.
Weve also had frogs and many slowworms. Last summer she brought me a ring snake alive. Tht was fun to capture in the house and release again 😄