I Looked Him Dead In The Eye

[Hound dog]

It's never a good thing when you're minding your own business and enjoying yourself on your computer when you happen to catch movement out of the corner of your eye. This especially true when that movement has been made by a field mouse that has just made his way into your kitchen via the open pantry door.

For several Loooooong moments we look into each others eyes.

Mouse decides I must not mind him in my house and tries to venture out into the kitchen more. I raise my voice and the lil bugger zips back into the pantry. I look but can't find him. But I know he's still there because I can hear him.

So.......

I open the front door and call for my mouser cat Shadow who is never far away. She comes dashing inside and I pick her up and place her near the open pantry door. I go back to my computer in the corner of the kitchen.

Several mins later I hear rustling paper. So does Shadow who slinks up to the pantry to investigate. Two seconds later she's in "mouser mode". So I watch. Grizzly yes, but hey I've never actually seen her kill a mouse, I just get her "gifts".

My God do hunting cats have patience! She stood in the hunting stance for a really long time.

Since I was also cooking supper, I guess the food smells were too much for the mouse's judgement. Next thing I know Shadow pounces.

She got him through a walmart plastic bag. :smile: Then decides to tote him thru the kitchen. I go to see and she isn't finished killing it yet. Blood thirsty as I am when it comes to mice I start shouting," Kill it! Kill it!" Shadow is giving me looks that clearly state Hey I'm doin my best here! lol

Job done, I don't want her to EAT the thing. Not only ewwwww, but she's already gotten tapeworm several times eating the mice she kills. So I go to the frig and reward her with a piece of cheese.

Darn cat doesn't wanna leave her "kill". :rofl: So picture me trying to hand feed a cat cheese while slipping on a rubber glove, grabbing a empty walmart bag, scooping up the dead mouse.... EWWWWWWW

Then Shadow is mad at me cuz her kill has disappeared, despite the cheese reward. lol

Until......

She hears ANOTHER rustling come from the pantry.....

She's now parked on the pantry floor. :rofl:

At this rate I might just have to invest in a litter box/litter and let the cat stay inside for awhile. :rolleyes:

 

[flutterbee]

You didn't let her eat it?! Might want to rethink that if you think you have more. She might go on strike. :rofl:

When I was 15, I was home alone and there was a mouse in the house. It was hiding behind the door, between the wall and the door. We had 7 cats...all indoor/outdoor. I was NOT going to bed with a mouse in the house, so I grabbed 2 of the cats, put one on each end of the door and went to bed fully expecting to get up in the morning and having to clean up the carcass.

So, I get up in the morning and the cats are lounging in the kitchen not so patiently waiting for their breakfast. I'm thinking, Great! Mouse must be dead.

Nope. The mouse was still alive and well behind the door. The cats got tired of waiting on it to come out. :hammer: I then got Taffy - the hunter who was out hunting all night - and showed him the mouse. He picked it up, headed straight for the door, waited patiently for me to open the door and made short business of the mouse. He didn't mess around.

My kitties now are indoor kitties, but I know that Puddles and Baby Abbey would take care of it. Baby Kitty (aka Holly, but Baby Kitty stuck...even though she's 8 years old) would think it's too much work. I never have flies in the house. Puddles catches them in mid air. No small feat considering how obese he is. He looks like a bowling pin when he's sitting. It's fun to watch him in action. Baby Abbey was all over the counters the other night going after a mosquito. She finally got it.

Before Puddles and Abbey, when it was just Cassie and Baby Kitty we had a mouse. I kept wondering why I was going through cat food so fast. Well, the mouse was stealing it. I guess the cats didn't mind sharing. :hammer:

 

[bby31288]

I actually laughed out loud that everyone in my family say whats so funny! My cat brings me presents all the time....

 

[AllStressedOut]

When I was about 6 years old, I had a sweetheart of a cat, fat and dumb too. Waldo loved me just as much as I loved him. One morning, I woke up, even as a kid I took awhile to get out of bed. My dad saw me awake and says to me "Waldo left you a present." I look down at the foot of my bed and there lyes a dead mouse. I freaked! Dear old Dad got his laugh and came then cleaned up the dead mouse.

One of my new adoptees "Mac" is adorable right before he pounces. He dances. At least thats what it looks like. He crouches down in front and his butt sticks up in the air and he starts shifting his weight from foot to foot so his butt wiggles. Its adorable.

Cats are fun!

 

[timer lady]

Lisa,

Given the age of my home (almost 100 years old), I'm surprised we don't see more mice in here. We have on average 2 visitors a winter. Our cat cannot wait for them - I know Samson has been waiting by the back porch door - just waiting, no daring a mouse to try & enter the house.

Unfortunately, husband has already put out that mouse trap stuff - there isn't a hint of any activity on the back or front porches.

Don't you love the optimism in our animals? :rofl: Sam continues to sit at the back door. :smile:

 

[Lothlorien]

<span style='font-size: 17pt'><span style="color: #CC0000">EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! </span> </span>

 

[timer lady]

Loth,

The way I see it is if I can take on tweedles on can take on anything. :rofl: :surprise: :smile:

 

[Kathy813]

Given a choice between spiders and mice, I'd take mice any day.

~Kathy

 

[Hound dog]

I'm with you Kathy. A spider will freak me out big time. A lil ol' mouse doesn't bother me. :rofl:

I think Nichole's had too many rodents as pets. I've become immune to them. (I just don't want them in the house)lol

 

[mrscatinthehat]

Oh this so reminds me of the first winter husband and I had our house. husband and I had two dogs. We kept losing dogfood. I was sitting at the computer that was in the dining room. One night something hit me on the head. I looked up and couldn't tell what was going on until I saw a piece of dogfood falling at me and the darn little nose sticking out. We bought a fixer upper so I just climbed on the desk and started pulling down ceiling tiles. That is what husband found me doing when he got home. We brought home cats the next day. They do a darn fine job of evicting the little critters. I never find any bodies though and I am just guessing that they saw me flush one down the toilet and that is what they do now. :hypnosis:

Beth

 

[susiestar]

A few years ago we lived with my mom and dad while husband was in grad school. Mom and dad had 2 cats, one my Freckles didn't like them. So what did my excellent mouser do? She found a mouse in the house and made it a PET. She would have a fit if I went near the closet where she kept it. It took me a while to get husband to get the mouse ( and the babies seh had had by then!) out of my closet!!!!

Once we moved out of my parents home she moused again for us. I personally think it was both a statement and her mid-life crisis!!!!

Our gracie LOVES mice. Thinks it is fun to bat them around a while before she kills them.

My parents have an OLD cat who used to be a great mouser. Then they have Sammy, who is a lover, not a fighter. He once lost a mouse - behind a SOCCER ball!!! HE is a total snuggle bunny, but has no clue in the whole hunting thing. So, when The old cat felt he could no longer mouse and realized he oculd NOT teach Sammy to mouse, the old cat brought home Tommy. Tommy is difficult child's cat. They are so totally bonded it is fun to watch. Tommy mouses, it is incredible because the rest of the time his goal is not to move and to be as fat as possible. He likes to lay on his back with his paws in the air. And fart while he does it. He can clear a 10 X 12 room in less than a minute!!!!! But boy can he hunt. And boy is he fat - about 18 pounds!!

Susie

 

[Hound dog]

It's so nice to know my cats aren't so weird afterall.

:rofl: :rofl:

 

[Marguerite]

Someone did some research, can't remember who, and found that we are only aware of a fraction of our cats' kills. So let him eat the mouse - he's probably eating a lot of other mice (and lizards) that you don't know about.

Regularly worming the cat is a small price to pay for a happy mouser.

I'll have to look up - what sort of tapeworm can a cat get from eating a mouse? You've got me with that one. Different country, different beasties...

My parents had two cats when they lived up in banana-growing country. The old Queenslander house on stilts, timber with wooden shutters. Mum heard a muffled "mmrrw" at the back door, said, "Sounds like Scruffy's caught another rat, he won't shut up until we let him in to do his parade of honour," and opened the back door for the cat.
Scruffy stood there on the back step with a very much alive and annoyed Eastern Brown Snake in his jaws, snake about 4' long. Yes, they are venomous. Mum stood at the door, pointing and shrieking, "S-N-A-K-E!!!"
Dad headed for the back door, found it blocked by Mum and headed out the front and down the long flight of stairs, grabbing his spade along the way. Scruffy, meanwhile, had momentarily let go the snake which promptly began to slither through the stairs and under the house. Dad just missed it.
We didn't worry about the snake possibly hiding under the house - Scruffy would have just caught it again, so we knew it would be well gone.

Marg

 

[Lothlorien]

My parents have a house that was built in the late 1800's. We used to get field mice all the time, until we started feeding the stray cats outside. Gotta love cats!

Now my parents have since taken all the kittens in and spay the mothers.

 

[donna723]

I'm another one with a very old (160 years) house and an occasional mouse problem when the weather starts getting chillier ever year. Only in my case, my "expert mouser" is my oldest Boston Terrier, Ragan. She's as deadly as a cat, just as quick and just as patient. If she hears one, she will sit quietly, on high alert, for hours and hours until it shows itself. Then she pounces ... then I see her running through the house with an anxious look on her face and her cheeks all puffed out. She doesn't really know what to do with them after she catches then, so she's got this live mouse in her mouth. I tell her to "SPIT" and she patooies it out on the carpet, and they're always dead - I think they drown in there or she scares them to death! :shocked: She doesn't ever try to eat them. That's a little too icky for her and she always looks relieved when I pick them up and dispose of them, like ... "You're not gonna make me eat that, are you?" (Her vet also said not to let her eat them)

The first winter in this house I only saw a few. The second winter we were overrun with them. Ragan caught 22 on the floor and I got several more in "sticky traps" on the kitchen counters. Last year, with four outside cats in residence, I didn't see even a single one. This year though, even with the cats outside, we seem to have one or two but they've smartened up this year. They stay up on the counters, never on the floor where Ragan can get them. So, as much as I hate those things, I guess it's back to the sticky traps. Yes, they're horrible ... but so is finding a dead mouse floating in your dishwater! been there done that!

 

[Hound dog]

Too funny Donna! :rofl:

I used to have a beagle that hunted mice for me. He, too, was exceptionally good at it.

I used to use the sticky traps a long time ago. I stopped once I saw the remains of a leg left behind by a mouse desperate to get loose from one. Sort of changed my views on just how Humane they are. Now I stick to the old fashioned sort and my cats. Although so far the mice seem too smart for the old fashioned sort of trap.

Hmmmm. I'm seeing a pattern. My victorian is well over 100 yrs old, too.

 

[witzend]

Good luck getting that second mouse away from Shadow! She won't be giving it away for a piece of cheese this time.

You know what they say about mice. If you have one, you have more! Shadow should be busy for a bit...

 

[TerryJ2]

Kill it! Kill it!" Shadow is giving me looks that clearly state Hey I'm doin my best here!

OMG, bring on the lions and Christians in the Coliseum, LOL!

My husband always reminds me that where ever you see one mouse, you'll see 6 ... or 8 ... they never have litters of one.

Keep the cat handy.



:pet:

 

[totoro]

I been known to yell "Kill it kill it" Big Momma constantly brings the little field mice in and does this full mouth, meowl.... then drops it by husband and I and prances around... while the mouse is trying to get away, IN THE HOUSE!!!
So we are on the couch screaming at "Rainy" (her real name) Kill it Kill It!!! She doesn't... she walks away and goes to her food bowl... this happens about once a week. I have gotten so used to it that a couple of weeks ago she brought in a baby and we put it in a cage and fed it milk for a couple of days and then let it go!!! I will now pick them up by the tail and toss them out in the field...

The best is when she brings them upstairs when we are asleep!!! I wake to that, MEAOWL!!!! and then she drops it... so husband and I or just me are up chasing this stupid field mouse through our room in thew middle of the night... I toss them off the upstairs deck!!!

Her and Nanner do get the ones that live in the house though, they kill those ones for some reason??? I will walk down stairs in the morning and almost step on it lying dead in the middle of the room....

Love our cats!!!