Please tell me you also have cats that completely fail at catting 🙀

[YelramBob]

How many cats does it take to catch a pigeon? Answers on a postcard please before I post pictures....

Quite a different type of uselessness, but our cat will frequently roll off things (eg our bed) if he’s “being tummied” - lying on his back and having his tummy rubbed is his favourite. He gets into a sort of blissed out state, purring, paws waving in the air, then has a really surprised/slightly offended face on him when he lands up on the ground.

He does at least always end up on his feet, he’s not that useless. And he’s good at jumping/climbing.

My old kitty Bobby was friends with a crow. They would just sit together companionably in the back yard. 🐈‍⬛ 🐦‍⬛ But heaven help any mice that ventured by. He was a fearsome mouser.

Previous cats have caught mice, rats, birds, raided vole nests and brought the babies to the door one by one. This one, who is now an old man really doesnt have a clue but surprised us by catching a frog and walked to the door with a frog leg hanging out each side of his mouth. During lockdown the rats who frequented the local restaurant moved and we caught him and the rat having a stand off in the garden, they both just satlooking at each other, totally chilled. He does get excited by a spider in the house though!

Cat clearly a local.

My late fat cat used to look very bemused at flying things - also at neighbours cats jumping over our fence - he’d then lay down and rest again from the excitement of it all. He did once catch a moth - that fell at his feet though.

A neighbour’s cat who tried to run my home as well as her own, sat outside my house whilst a magpie kept doing pat a tail run - it was hilarious actually - she was a slender, fit, bossy cat but couldn’t be bothered even to swipe - she was though very focussed on getting in mine but was banned for being too mean to my fat cat - maybe she just didn’t want the distraction of catching a bird whilst she plotted her next break in attempt.

So that’s more than 2 needed here lol.

My cat is an avid hunter so loves to drag a pigeon through the cat flap alive and then torture it. I did manage to save the last one though - it was surprisingly ok despite losing a lot of feathers.

None of my Persians have had any idea about catting. I almost died of surprise when the late Cheddar allegedly caught a Robin. (I think it must have fallen out of the tree, she just wasn’t capable of catching it)😂😂

my sister had a childhood cat that used to catch rabbits the same size as her. More often than not they would still be alive and screaming. Not fun.
After this feral beast died, we had another cat that used to bring home roast potatoes. The neighbours used to chuck leftover roast dinner into the field behind our houses for the foxes. They clearly weren’t right because who has such a thing as ‘leftover’ roast potatoes??

My cat’s dearest wish is to catch a squirrel. He does all crouching and slow stalking then springs out from too far away. He then does his best sprint but the squirrel easily outpaces him so he ends up doing a nonchalant kind of walk with a ‘What? I was just having a gallop down the garden! Was there a squirrel?’ kind of air about him.

He was definitely going to get this one!

Our older two have largely retired from hunting now but our younger two are still murdering little sods.
A previous cat caught a Moorhen once (I think he'd actually gone into the river to catch it as his belly and legs were soaking wet). He failed in catting on this occassion though because he couldn't get through the railings with said moorhen on his mouth. The moorhen escaped safely.

Mind you that was the same cat who started stalking a black swan in the garden until it turned round and hissed at him. Never seen him move so fast 🤣

My old cat caught a wood pigeon and brought it into the house, alive, I had to get a neighbour to help.

Another old cat tried and failed to catch a wood pigeon in the garden.

Current cat recently caught her first rat, she’s half tabby half white and only caught mice until recently, thank F the rat was dead and outside my French windows.

Childhood cat caught numerous rats daily dead and alive in and out of the house and garden, he was a tabby, not especially big. Only once went to the vet when a rat bit him, never had any boosters. Lived to 17-18. He was adopted as was left in a box outside a restaurant with his siblings, my dad found him.

One of my cats goes low and crouching up to the patio wall to pounce on… a butterfly. Then when she gets there she just stops and stares at the butterfly not quite sure what to do and it usually flies away.

Once she did manage to pounce on a butterfly but didn’t know how to take things from there so took her paws off and the butterfly flew off completely fine.

She is quite good at catching the light from the dishwasher though.

🤣🤣🤣. These are hilarious!

my old half Siamese half moggy used to have a white ikea rattus rat toy that he’d play with and play fetch with. He caught mice and frogs mostly. One day he was in the house and I brought stuffed rat toy him, no interest, scared, ran from it. I think he’d encountered an actual live rat outside once which had threatened/hissed at him! 🤣

Oh I have a similar tale re soaking cats. Once my mum popped round for tea and cat (half Siamese half moggy) came wandering into the house, soaking wet muddy legs and belly. He couldn’t get into my pond and I don’t think there were other ponds but across road, back of house in park there was a wildlife pond. Wild. My cat had been seen in this park before. He was a great wanderer. I’m sure he went in this pond! 😱. Cat was also known as the yowling cat locally due to his Siamese meow and his propensity for having frequent fights with other cats, yes he was neutered!

My other cat has unbelievable speed and agility, can leap to almost my height to swat a fly out of the air, and has much better natural camouflage (tabby) than her sister. However she is scared of the wind so won’t venture beyond the patio, meaning the local wildlife is safe. She is very good at keeping the house fly-free in the summer though!

Mine is similar, half white half tabby, regularly leaps to try to catch wood pigeons, but she’s stopped that this year. Age catching up, she’s 12.

My old cat Smoky was an absolute alpha male and apex predator but unfortunately looked like a great fluffy ball of cute so nobody took him seriously.
He once brought in a seagull, he would fight foxes and win and once cornered my then husband who was afraid to move.
The only cat he was afraid of was my gigantic feral cat Bluebell. But that didnt stop him trying to mount her. It never ended well for him. He would hide under the sofa licking his wounds. He obviously saw her as a mountain to be conquered 😂

My three would all react differently. One would have it for breakfast if he was peckish, and another would watch it from a distance in a befuddled way. The third would sneak up on it via the bushes, think better of it because it is considerably bigger than she is, and just sit and intimidate it with a stony glare. Mind you, if she found out that pigeon tastes a bit like chicken, she'd take her chances.

My old girl used to love attempting to chase birds. She’d crouch down, stalk to them, waggle her butt, keep waggling her butt, still waggling her butt as it flies away. Then pounce.
And still walk off quiet proud of herself.
She tried to trick us one day and brought us a dead bird. But we’d seen it earlier - already dead.
I miss her!

My old cat used to bring in worms. He would then hide them under the edge of the rug, so that when I lifted it to hoover I would find a collection of shrivelled, dried worm corpses. Didn’t generally catch much else, apart from one (I think?) mouse, whose guts I stepped on as I went into the bathroom in the dark one night.

@JudgementalRaccoon my childhood cat did this! One of his hiding places was inside my school bag so I would get out a textbook in class and find a dried up worm stuck to it.

My greatly missed beloved soul cat Boycat was pretty useless at catting. Magnificent panther, 6kg of long, lean handsomeness, and definitely not quite right in the head. Terrified of almost everything, clumsy as hell - would fall off things like windowsills or the arm of the sofa he was lying on. Had the attention span of a paralytic gnat even when treats were involved. We'd say he only had 2 brain cells; one to keep him breathing and one to adore me with.

He was also, like his sister, one of the gentlest cats ever. Never bit, scratched, or even swore at anyone or anything i8ncluding each other.

Until that day when some mice decided to move into the lean-to conservatory and completely ignored any traps whatever I baited them with, so I let the cats in there. Boycat turned out to be a demon mouser, and very territorial about his prey as well. He actually growled at his sister when he was playing with his latest victim & she came within 2 yards. I reckon he out-hunted her by about 2:1.

My cats spend so long stalking pigeons wiggling their bums that they eventually time out and they fly off

I mean even stupid pigeons out with them

Sorry you made me lol with your tale of stepping onto a mouse guts in the dark in the middle of the night! 🤣

Not catting experiences but tale of cat catching things, my best friend’s cat Lola is black and fluffy, she brought in a dead rat once, my friend didn’t see it and trod on it. Eeek!

Her boyfriend, earlier this year suffered the same fate, rat on bedroom floor which he stepped on!

I would absolutely kill my cat if she did that. One reason why I do not use car doors (I have them fitted), she’s only allowed out through French doors, and never at night. My old cats were demons, on more than one occasion I saw the white one bringing a mouse through the cat flap, I screamed and he backed out with it! Other old cat once surprised me with a frog at bottom of stairs, belly up, I thought it was a leaf. I chucked frog out back door and then locked cat in!