Cats and their 'gifts'

A question about : Cats and their 'gifts'

How do you cope with them?
We adopted a three year old cat a few months ago and she is getting more and more generous. For the last few weeks she has been bringing in mice every night, sometimes more than one.
We are often woken in the night to find her chasing one around our bedroom. Often she leaves remains by my bedside, still cringing after the night I got out of bed and trod straight on a squishy mouse organ. She also either gets bored with playing with them or loses them regularly so we've had a few hiding in our house for a few days each time. I've put a few traps out, not caught any that way but we have managed to catch 4 or 5 live ones in bowls in the last couple of weeks and get them out. They were disorientated so pretty sure she had only recently brought them in.
Is there anything that can be done to discourage this? We sternly say no and try and get her out of the house with them if we catch her but usually she brings them in after we've gone to bed.
I'm terrified that one will find a good hiding place and start breeding in the house.

Have considered locking the cat flap at night but not sure about toileting or if this would affect her health as she tends to be more active in the night.

Best answers:

• Mustn't chuckle. Lemoncurd, but this is all so, so normal and natural.
  I know the euurrggghh of putting bare feet out on daintily placed offering.
  At least not yet at this stage:https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ca...inging+panties
  Plenty of historic precedent.
• My husband's cat always used to put dead birds in his sister's bed; under the covers. She was convinced that her brothers did it.
• We have exactly the same issue with our cat, although she never tries to eat them, she just brings them in and lets them go to run around the house. It's horrible, catching them leaves me shaking like a leaf, and i worry there may be some in the house we don't know about.
  However, there is no way you can discourage this behaviour. I'm guessing you might be a first time cat owner if you think that sternly saying no might do the trick - that's just not how cats work! You basically have three options:
  1. Lock the cat flap at night. Lots of people keep their cats in at night due to the dangers they can face outdoors. If you are worried about toileting, put a litter tray down. It's always a good idea to have a litter tray down anyway, even if the cat flap is never locked. However, if your cat is anything like mine, this option will lead to you constantly being woken in the night by your cat bitterly complaining about the restriction to her freedom.
  2. Leave the cat flap unlocked but keep your bedroom door closed at night so any presents can at least be kept out of the bedroom. I decided to try this approach after waking at 3am one morning to find a giant (and I mean really huge) moth crawling up my arm and a very proud cat looking on with great satisfaction. However, if your cat is anything like mine, this option will lead to you constantly being woken in the night by your cat relentlessly scratching at your bedroom door, angered by the fact that she's not able to perform her usual trick of rushing in soaking wet from a downpour and creeping under the duvet to warm her cold soggy self up against you.
  3. Somehow convince yourself that you can totally live with this behaviour, it's really not that bad, and in fact it's quite endearing when you think about it. Oh how you'll chuckle about having to spend your Saturday morning emptying furniture so you can move it to access a hiding mouse, then laugh at the comical scenes as you, your partner and the cat all scramble to catch the mouse before it finds somewhere else equally inaccessible to hide.
  After unsuccessfully attempting options 1 & 2, we have settled on option 3. That's the thing with cats, they enter your lives and beguile you with their charms until you adore them so much that stepping on mouse entrails with your bare feet seems a small price to pay
• Further wise words:
  'Women and cats will do as they please: men and dogs must get used to it.'
• Aww, don't tell her off, she's doing (what she thinks) is a nice thing for you!
  My lovely boy is a prolific hunter and has brought in all sorts of things (alive/dead/gruesome etc). Probably one of the worst was a grass snake, and we've had lots of sets of lungs. He's got all fat and lazy the older he's got, so may as your girl gets older she'll mellow.
  Snuggles advice is pretty much spot on...
• We shut our cat in the kitchen at night. He has the choice of two beds and a blanket on top of the tumble drier to sleep on, plus food, water and a litter tray. The litter tray gets used maybe once a week. Never brings us nighttime presents and no disturbance in the night.
  Our previous cat we used to do the same thing. He'd occasionally shout at us to wake up in the morning, or in the middle of the night after we'd come back from holiday, but it was very much routine sleeping in the kitchen and we've never had problems.
• A couple of my cats used to do it. We tackled it by having 2 cat flaps, one on the back door and 1 in the conservatory. We used to set the kitchen one so that they could get out but not back in, so if they did bring anything in it didn't get any further than the conservatory.
  I also was worried that there were random mice in the house so I put a bucket in the middle of the floor with some old bricks at the side, balanced so they were like steps and put mouse food on each step and then some cheese in the bottom of the bucket, theory being that the mice would go up the steps and go after the cheese and not be able to get out of the bucket. It worked and we caught 5 mice in one night. That was when we started locking the kitchen cat flap.......
• A collar with a loud bell on- NOT the safety elastic sort which is anything but safe, the quick release buckle kind- has helped cut down the number of gifts I get but nothing will stop it totally.
  It sounds like she is very much a nocturnal hunter so keeping her in over night with a litter tray should help.
  Be prepared for some protesting and make sure she has access to plenty of toys to keep herself occupied.
• Both of ours are nightmares. One leaves his 'gifts' outside, but the things he brings are HUGE, I am talking a rat bigger than my foot, and if we don't dispose of them fast enough he starts eating them and leaves entrails all over our patio.
  The second one, he catches small mice and voles, but is always desperate to get them inside. We have no cat flap so have to manually let him in, and he will try and sneak past you with one in his mouth and make a mad dash to get it inside. You have to be really on the ball to stop him getting in with it as he is DESPERATE.
  We tried keeping them in at night, which has worked for cat two, but cat one catches his gigantic prey in the day it seems, and both of them have bells!!!!
• Thanks everyone, I see we are not alone!
  We've recently moved house and I think that might have exacerbated the issue. Our previous cats were also big hunters but didn't tend to leave live mice, I think if one got bored the other would find the mouse. The main problems were the frogs (very noisy) and the birds, one seemed to love earthworms and we kept on finding them stuck halfway under the stair carpet!
  In this house we have carpets downstairs and a downstairs bedroom so we notice more and it's harder to clean up. Ironically one of the reasons I was keen to get another cat was being paranoid about mice getting in (older property) and had heard suspicious noises which turned out to be the central heating system.
  Just glad she hasn't progressed to rats, that must be horrible!
• I also forgot, cat one has a penchant for giant grey squirrels. I have absolutely no idea how he catches them, but they are massive.
• Ok to date our 2 rescue cats have brought home ..
  dead mice
  lots of live mice .. one I swear has been in this house so often he watches sky TV when he makes a visit ..This is thanks to Big charlie who has 3 teeth left and literally brings them in live but very soggy.. and lets em go for a couple of days
  one mouse who lived in the kitchen and utility for over one week while we chased him around. Cats sat there watching as he scooted past them
  1 bat
  1 wren in the middle of the night who flew around our bedroom
  2 dead rats
  Shrews . live and dead
  Some dead birds and some live birds..
  Don't think a stern word means a lot to them TBH.
  I have had rescue cats for over 30 years and Cats will be Cats at the end of the day.
  They are bringing in the live things as they are trying to teach you how to catch prey , it's what they do
  Good luck
• Best thing our cat brought home was ..... A brand new mousetrap!! Our three girls try and bring all sorts in, so if we have "an incident" (last one involved Dh (naked!) chasing a mouse around the living room at 3.00 a.m. using bad language whilst I pretended I was asleep) we keep them restricted to the utility room. They howl to come in, but I wouldn't put it past them to put a live mouse on the bed whilst I was in it and I couldn't cope with that!!
• Have you seen this about the cat that 'steals' items from the owner's neighbours?
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zimkYhUU0W0
• Re bouncydog1: "but I wouldn't put it past them to put a live mouse on the bed whilst I was in it and I couldn't cope with that!!"
  That did happen to my husband. He was having a nap and suddenly felt that someone was watching him! When he opened his eyes there was this mouse sitting next to him on the pillow and watching him. He has never jumped out of bed that quickly before and called for me to get rid of the mouse (which I did, captured it and took it to the bottom of the garden). We did have a very good female hunter cat at that time but she would bring everything in alive and let go!
• TBH dead or even live Mickeys are a true sign your cats really love you..
  xxx
• Oh God
  I hope my monster doesn't catch on to this lark !
  Most she brings in is live Moths and Spiders, plays with them, then moans when she kills them!
  She does spend a lot of time hiding in the bushes looking at the birds on the grass, but doesn't go after them.
  She did rip up some important paperwork last night though, which I brought home from work. My Home office looked like someone had just got married, confetti everywhere !