The great thing about cats is the fact that they keep the mouse population down. Which in our house - with a history of 18 mice caught and released into the
local park (plus one brutally murdered in a traditional trap, to my eternal horror) - is a good thing.
The horrible thing about cats is the fact that they play with the mouse that they've caught long after it ceases to be potential food.
Two days running I've had to remove a sodden cold carcass from Toby that he was playing with delightedly in the back yard. Despite being totally beyond all chance of revival, Toby was tossing the mouse in the air and diving on it, before dashing away and then leaping back onto it.
The first mouse he brought into the house - that was horrid. It was very dead and very cold - I had doubts that he'd even been responsible for its death! And he was very miffed and confused when I removed it and binned it.
The next thing he brought into the house was a dead pigeon. That was more than foul because it was so much bigger!
Fortunately, I am now forced to keep the catflap on out only, as the neighbourhood cats (ginger, blackie, tortie and ollie) all treat the catflap as the door to free food. Ginger has even been up on my kitchen bench to find the food when I removed it from the floor. I think I've mentioned this before! So the upshot is that this also stops Toby from bringing his dead into the house to smear all over my furniture. With our carpet being the eye searing horror that it is (persian) I'd have stepped on a dead mouse before I saw it, and the result of that would be a motherload of swear words, whether the girls were in hearing range or not!
The good news is that we've seen no live mice in the house this year.
The horrible thing about cats is the fact that they play with the mouse that they've caught long after it ceases to be potential food.
Two days running I've had to remove a sodden cold carcass from Toby that he was playing with delightedly in the back yard. Despite being totally beyond all chance of revival, Toby was tossing the mouse in the air and diving on it, before dashing away and then leaping back onto it.
The first mouse he brought into the house - that was horrid. It was very dead and very cold - I had doubts that he'd even been responsible for its death! And he was very miffed and confused when I removed it and binned it.
The next thing he brought into the house was a dead pigeon. That was more than foul because it was so much bigger!
Fortunately, I am now forced to keep the catflap on out only, as the neighbourhood cats (ginger, blackie, tortie and ollie) all treat the catflap as the door to free food. Ginger has even been up on my kitchen bench to find the food when I removed it from the floor. I think I've mentioned this before! So the upshot is that this also stops Toby from bringing his dead into the house to smear all over my furniture. With our carpet being the eye searing horror that it is (persian) I'd have stepped on a dead mouse before I saw it, and the result of that would be a motherload of swear words, whether the girls were in hearing range or not!
The good news is that we've seen no live mice in the house this year.
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