Fancy someone publicly shaming that poor cat probably give it all sorts of hangups, someone call the RSPCA.
Luckily we had no mice in our home when I was a kid. My cat Darkie was terrified of them and would have run a mile. David
My three would recoil in horror at the idea of a mouse. They wouldn't know what to do with it. Basil is pretty good at catching bluebottles, however, and mangling the odd crane-fly.
I think it must come from having a mother who was abandoned (probably in the early stages of pregnancy) and left to fend for herself. I can still see in my mind's eye Dandelion and her three little kittens in a circle on the bathroom floor while she showed them what a mouse was and what wonders one could do with it
When we had a cat, many moons ago, she once returned home with a goldfish which she proudly deposited on the doorstep......to this day, we have no idea where she got it from as there were no ponds in the nearby gardens Be thankful you don't own the cat that lives next door but one to us - her owner has, so far, found deposited in the kitchen, frogs, toads, slow-worms, birds of all varieties, mice, shrews ....most of which have (thankfully) been still alive but have had to be nursed back to a state of sanity..... Ann
:goes cold: This reminds me of an incident in my childhood. Out in the country, our cats were proper hunters - rabbits, rats, weasels... the occasional lizard - all carried home victorious. One day, my mother said, "What on earth has that cat got?" and closer inspection showed an extremely large salmon, which one of the cats had dragged to the door with considerable effort, as the fish was three times its size. Mum hissed, "Get rid of it!" - the monster was quickly slung into the garden, followed by an excited stream of cats. Mum's mind was obviously working faster than the rest of us, as ten minutes later we could hear the purposeful click-click of high heeled shoes negotiating the gravel path to the cottage, and it was our well-to-do neighbour from down the hill (think 'Margot Leadbetter'). "People will steal anything nowadays!" Margot had left the salmon, loosely wrapped, on the front lawn with her other groceries in a wicker shopping basket while she parked her car behind the house. The salmon had been stolen from right from underneath her nose... Did we own up? I'm afraid we didn't. Margot finished her outburst about the youth of today and clicked away home. The monster fish? That was given a respectful burial in the rose garden along with all the other dead things.
When I was very young and living in Chelmsford we had fields at the bottom of our garden, our cat often brought home Frogs and Toads but one day she excelled herself and deposited a Grass Snake on the back doorstep, my mother was not impressed. Oddly enough she never killed the prey she brought home, probably thought she was helping feed our family, we were not well off but never that desperate. For non UK people the Grass Snake is non-venomous.
You know Bonzo Dog the more I look at that photo of the cat the more it strikes me how dejected it looks, almost as though the cat knows what the label implies.
Going back a few years I had a beautifull grey cat who after an argument with a very large pine tree lost one eye,He came home one day & dropped on the floor a live baby rabbit, I had to go around to all the neighbours to find where he had come from,the rabbit was none the worse for his ordeal.
Watched a programme on TV called Odd Couples a few days ago. A couple in I think Canada bought some fertile Duck eggs and hatched them, one day they noticed the Ducklings were missing. Then they saw their cat carrying one to an out building, when they checked there was the cat. kittens and Ducklings all curled up together, the odd thing is they showed a picture of the ducklings latched on to the nipples of the cat. It was thought that perhaps as the Ducklings hatched around the same time as the kittens were born, the cat mothered them instead of eating them.
The only thing to better the rabbit was my german shepherd,she brought in & deposited on the bedroom carpet a guinea pig,it belonged to the neighbours children & must have crawled under the fence,unfortunatly although it showed no sign of injury it was dead im assuming the shock was too much for the poor thing.but you cant beat a friend of mine who had a labrador who brought things home every day,odd shoes & thongs,cartons of milk & loaves of bread.