Is it Friday already? That means footie tomorrow (anybody watching the consolation match?), and my departure for Poland a week from tomorrow.
But look at this poor moggie:
Hili: How am I to hunt these insects through the net?
A: Come outside.
Hili: I can’t. You are taking my picture and there is nobody at home to open the door for me.
In Polish:
Hili: Jak ja mam polować na te owady przez siatkę?
Ja: To chodź na dwór.
Hili: Nie mogę, bo robisz mi zdjęcie i nie ma mi kto otworzyć drzwi.
Eee! That does strange things to my eyes!
Does Hili ever catch mice or birds or the like?
We have never seen one of her kills! 🙂
( Footie is very much on tomorrow )
Hili catches mostly mice but, thankfully, only seldom shows us her prey. Sometimes, but very seldom, vi can find feathers on the verandah and we know who is the culprit. Once she dragged a living mole in but Andrzej took it from her, relatively unharmed, and let it go. There was a dialogue about it.
Well done, Hili. Monty always drags them inside…it’s a mess. 🙂
But how the deuce do you train a cat to make the kill fast?
I often have to be the one delivering the final blow if the poor creature is beyond salvation.
I think the training has to be done by the cat’s mom while still a kitten.
Baihu only goes outside on a leash. Even still, crickets and lizards and the like within a few feet radius of us quickly disappear down his gullet. He hasn’t shown any tendency to play with his prey, though he obviously savors them.
With toys, it’s a different story. When he wants to be, he’s fully magnetic; something gets even close to his paws or his jaws, and he’s got an unbreakable grip. But most of the time he either keeps a light touch or does a quick catch-and-release. Sometimes, I think he’s entertaining me as much as himself….
b&
Yeah, I guess it’s a lost cause by now.
I’ve actually tried giving them back to him outside after I’ve broken their neck, but as soon as they stop jittering he loses interest. Bloody beast.
The worst is when he does it at night. I hate having to kill something first thing in the morning…..not a relaxing way to start the day. 🙂
One of the many reasons Baihu only leaves the house on a leash….
b&
I observed my oldest cat, Raisin, teach each of her four proteges (none of which were her offspring) how to quickly dispatch their prey. She’d catch a mouse, bring it back to them, let them play with it a bit trying to kill it before she’d step in and quickly kill it with one, well-placed nip in the neck. The thing is, I got Raisin when she was just a few weeks old so I’m not sure how she learned it.
A darling story – in my opinion, that is:
I am not little anymore; but when I was, we ‘had’ at any one time upwards of 15 to 20 kitty cats on the farm, almost all of them very, very helpful, laboring ones, especially for the safeties of the various grains. As per ancient uses of kitty cats as well !
Most o’ these hard – working moggies’ mama was Tootsie, their matriarch and, literally, their queen; I loved her so much that I remember .her. TO this day.
One sunny summer morning, my own mama was sweeping out the weer ( of two ) porches of the century – old farmhouse, the back one at where it became always the dirtier one with humans’ grimy apparel and boots. Up to its opened door meowed and meowed and meowed Tootsie, skinny as a railing, having just away off in the barns again … … recently birthed.
Mama with her broom swishing away stated to the thin air, “O Tootsie, go ! Shoo ! Go away. I haven’t anything this morning for you and your babes. Hell, I haven’t anything this morning for my own babies,” of which she had had four ( all of us ) by then.
Fifteen or so minutes’ time later, Mama is still working at cleaning and organizing that porch, its door still open and matters airing out. I was playing on the kitchen floor into which, interiorly, the porch opened.
A muffled meowing could be heard but no kitty cat seen. Until she was – Tootsie. With her jaws stuffed full – trying to call out to my own mother. Right at the porch’s very opened entrance. With, in those chompers o’hers, THE largest, wriggling, frickin’ rat that this little kiddo had ever encountered THAT close up !
Well, when Mama turned around, the shriek that she let go with was enough to make everybody ( literally ) DROP everything and run ! Her, me, Tootsie and, o’course, that particular damned beastie ! (Fortunately for Mama and me —- it ran away in the ‘correct’ direction ! )
When All were calm again finally, my mother felt so badly that she had reacted that way cuz she stated that, in her anthropomorphic opinionating, all that Tootsie had been trying to do was to help her Humans to feed their own little ones. Too.
Mama had told Tootsie to go away and find her own food — so, not only had she; but according to my mother’s belief, Tootsie was only wanting to share with another mother the fruits of her labors.
Blue
Beautiful story, Blue.
I was watching the rabbits in the back garden one day – a doe and it’s kits getting their couple of hours grass time. All destined for the pot, of course. And I see a calico “4 colour map of the world” cat come out of the bushes grab a kit, and leg it for the fence. Exit stage right, pursued by a doe, and me yelling my head off, at “Jackie”, our calico “map” cat.
Jackie was watching from the lounge window. Clearly totally innocent in deed, if totally guilty in thought.
I apologised. Fishily.