4m x 3m Omlet pen, cube, new auto door still boxed and coop light

[Fur 'n' Feathers]

Marley & Marcie our two rescue cats have settled in EXTREMELY well over the past month. They are brother & sister (must have different fathers!) and you can see in some of their behaviour and their faces they are related.... but that's where it stops.

 

Marley (the male) lives to chill out (must be related to Bob!), but Marcie, who is a year and a bit younger at 14 months, spends her time racing around and pouncing on anything that moves. The problem is she kills and eats it if she can too

 

Log so far:

Saturday am- mass of feathers (starling) on hall mat, blood up door paintwork, no ther evidence!

 

Sunday am- Ditto without the blood and with the feathers all over the hall floor.

 

Sunday (2 hrs later)- blood all over the utility floor, no other evidence

 

Monday am- live field vole dumped on hall carpet (rescued before she ate it )

 

Monday (short while later)- live mouse rescued from her just as she was about to bring it into the house.

 

Monday pm- collar & bell fitted. Tuesday & Wednesday - eating more , no presents

 

Wednesday eve-as we were telling a visitor of her exploits and that it had stopped after fitting the collar & bell... Marcie appeared in the utility room with the rear end of a live vole sticking out of her mouth. Rescued vole. Marcie annoyed at interfering owners

 

So, we've been against collars, especially as our cats have always been climbers and now we've conceded to fitting one it has limited effect ( might be helping the bird population).

 

What has Marley been doing during these forays? - sleeping...in the undergrowth, on the garden sink, in their basket upper bunk (etc., etc., etc.)

 

We've always had male cats and Marcie is our first female. It seems to be a particularly female attribute - possibly like lionesses hunting while the lions sleep

[Aunty e]

Our girls hunt - practically the first thing Saffy did after giving birth was bring down a sparrow

 

The boys are too lazy, although they've both brought me presents this week - a dead mouse and a live pigeon. I don't think they caught them though, Minnie and Saffy are quite sharing.

 

It's horrid, but I took the decision to uncollar them after they all got terribly sore round the neck this summer. They didn't bring as much in when they had collars, but they did still catch things. I think this is a bad time of year for it because babies and fledglings have left the nest, and are perhaps not as aware as fully grown adults are of the dangers of our garden.

[Fur 'n' Feathers]

That's decided it for us Aunty e. We've taken the collar off (didn't take much persuasion as we're not fans anyway).

 

A colleague at work today said she found a collar and bell no solution. She looks much better now!

[Patricia W]

Ours stopped hunting when she was about 9.... Our present one has only ever caught a couple of mice- but she's very greedy for cat food so I think not being hungry deters her too- and she does like her sleep. I'm sure part of its is temperament.

[Olly]

They do grow out of it, but not till they're quite old! Welly thankfully has only ever caught a few birds, but at 12 years old he still presents me with mice quite regularly.

 

There is a device you can get that emits a high-pitched beeping noise which is supposed to warn the birds, but even that isn't 100% succesful. I think it's just one of the (few) downsides to keeping cats, and I believe females are much more aggressive and determined hunters than males.

[Aunty e]

I wish I'd taken pictures of Nero's neck when I took his collar off - it was supposed to be one for sensitive cats, and it was properly fitted by our vet, and he wore it for a month - it took all of his fur off and left him with a flaky red patch that's taken two months to go. Maybe we just have very fragile pusscats, but I couldn't bear it, and they all seem much happier now (thank heavens for microchip catflaps).

 

Our one exception to this, is that we will collar for the first week or so in the new house, just in case they get lost in the new neighbourhood.

[Seagazer]

I've got a terrific boy hunter at the moment but the girls before him were definitely the hunters. But Dave is bringing so many things back at the moment it's awful. You really have to watch where you are walking

 

He has got a collar with 2 bells on it but it doesn't seem to stop him catching anything. I know he'll grow out of hunting eventually.

[Fur 'n' Feathers]

Well we took the collar off over a day ago and no "puss kill" has been brought into the house. We feel happier that the cats don't have collars on.

 

We note that ("Bob") Marley has been chilling out throughout the whole episode! You can't rouse him at all once he's asleep!!!!

[teri]

That's decided it for us Aunty e. We've taken the collar off (didn't take much persuasion as we're not fans anyway).

 

A colleague at work today said she found a collar and bell no solution. She looks much better now!

 

i agree about the collar. i've always hated them. as a teenager i worked in a cattery and we always removed any collars before housing any cat. most of the time there was a perfect bald ring around the cats neck where it had rubbed all the fur off.

my neightbour has been obsessed with putting a collar on MY cat!!!! if he pops round to her house he leaves with a collar complete with bells...she has also had him ID chipped in her name! my vet found it and changed the details.. the poor thing now has two floating round inside him as i had already had him done after at least a dozen collars have been removed and binned i think she has finally got the message because he hasn't had one for a while lets hope!

as for bringing in presents. he's far too idle although he does pinch things from the neighbours including packets of sweets, cigarettes, socks, a watch, an envelope with the milkmans money in it and a ring! all have been returned much to the neighbours ammusement

[Gem_Seb]

My cats have never brought anything home! yet! My parents cat Billy however is a totally different story he's always bringing home presents! he even manages to get pigeons through the cat flap and is sat there proudly waiting with it for my dad to come down in the morning!! nothing works with him either, he got his mouth stuck around the collar they put on him so that came off.

 

Dad heard the boy next door shouting to his dad the other morning, 'dad, how many goldfish did we have in the pond!' 4 have appeared on mum and dads doorstep in the past week!! 3 guesses where they were from!!

 

If you do find anything that works let me know, im sure my mum would appreciate it!!

[saracook31]

Our cats Mork and Mindy, are very enthusiastic hunters!

 

They're just under a year old now and can't wait to go out in the morning to bring us back something while we're eating breakfast!

 

Usually its shrews, we've been brought 8 back within about an hour and a half one morning! Thats no exaggeration!

 

But Mindy (who is still kitten size), who is the expert hunter, and likes to eat her catch in front of us has also brought back these:

a large pigeon.. without a head

2 baby rabbits

various birds

mice

moles

 

Mork who tends to be a lazy hunter, has brought back rabbits but usually comes back with baby birds out of a nest and last night brought back a baby shrew.. no hair, eyes still closed.. so cruel!!

 

We've never had cats like it!!

[Gem_Seb]

I just popped to my mums on my lunch break and who should come trotting round the corner but Billy! (their cat) whenever he hears my car he comes back! however today he had a massive pigeon in his mouth! lol!! my mum came out and shouted at him so he meowed at her! thus dropping the pigeon who got away!! hes not sat under the patio table sulking!! lol!

[teri]

my cat is too fat and lazy to bother catching his own dinner! however a cat i had a few years back had a pheasant! it was a huge great male and it's feathers were strewn from one end of the garden to the other!

we had absolutly no idea where it had come from or how our very small cat had managed to catch it let alone bring it home...

the mystery was solved a few years later when my neighbour admitted (during a drunken new years party) that he had been poaching and hung the bird in his garage to mature! poetic justice if you ask me!!!