Steve caught a bird today.
Let me back this up. Steve dragged a dead bird into the house today. I do not know if he killed it, if it was struck by lightning, or if it just fell out of a tree and he fell on it, but I do know he was very proud and very talkative when he dragged it into the house. We all were very appreciative, and said good job, Steve, even though we don’t want him killing shit, because there is no point yelling at an animal for acting on instinct.
At any rate, we gave him a little bit of tuna, and he promptly passed out in between the treat box and the bottled water, and has not moved for an hour or so. He reminds me so much of Mr. Purr Puff, in that he sleeps so soundly that it looks like he is dead.
different-church-lady
Then he caught it, there’s no question.
Depending on what kind of bird it was, he either contributed to the decline of songbirds or helped eliminate one more rat with wings.
Lee
My guess is if he were to fall asleep that way in a hallway, everyone (dogs included) would suddenly decide that whatever is on the other end of the hall was not that important.
Fluke bucket
In that first sentence I read Steve as Shawn and thought that things were getting a little out of hand on this blog for me.
Elizabelle
What kinda burd?
Yeah, he probably did catch it, since he was telling you about it.
Although I guess you could check it for tire treads.
Elizabelle
@Fluke bucket:
Me too! I thought Shawn first and then saw the cat pic.
Survivor. Bethany, WV.
Anne Laurie
See post immediately below, Cole — subject relevant to your interests.
dedc79
Put something on his collar that jingles so the birds can hear him coming.
Howard Beale IV
Y’know the bird coul’ve just hit a window and broke its neck-as I was coming back from lunch today at work we saw such a bird-damn thing flew into the glass door and that was it.
Achrachno
Wasn’t a Bachman’s Warbler was it?
JPL
Well my dog brought a dead mouse or a dead baby rat to the patio and he also enjoys snacking on worms.. so there… Why am I spilling these secrets of an obviously strange dog…
raven
Uh, you haven’t had him long enough for your moves to rub off on him.
JPL
@dedc79: I actually did that for my mutt. He has a little bell and since I have a wooded area, his collar lights up. He’s a strange rescue though.
jl
Tunch probably would have just fallen over onto a pre-deaded bird, and caught it that way. But this is Steve Cat. Don’t go stereotyping Steve. Let Steve be Steve. Glad Steve got a nice nap after his big victory out in the wild.
Comrade Scrutinizer
Don’t you like Blazing Saddles?
different-church-lady
When he starts bringing in live, unharmed (but quite terrified) rabbits and releasing them in the house, then we can compare feline greatness.
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
He might have gotten some skylitter. There’s not too much point in worrying about invasive non-native species like European sparrows or starlings.
MikeInSewickley
Nap time after bringing home the “bacon”… my kind of cat.
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore: Exactly: I tell my little man, “Junco bad, house sparrow good!”
Roger Moore
@dedc79:
Doesn’t help much. Cats are largely ambush predators who lie in wait for their prey. By the time the bell rings, it’s too late.
SiubhanDuinne
He dragged it into the house??
What was it, a fucking pelican?
SiubhanDuinne
@Roger Moore:
African or European swallow?
Lawrence
My cat treed a raccoon last summer that looked bigger than he was.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@SiubhanDuinne: Unladen.
Amir Khalid
The first couple of times Bianca killed a sparrow that had had flown into the house, she left a mess of blood and feathers. Then the birdies wised up and stayed out.
satby
My cats have been sitting in their catio hoping the fledgling robins would flutter close enough to the fence to get caught. Stupid birds went well out of their way to go into the dog pen. Stupid dead birds.
GregB
Stick tiny marshmellows on his claws. He won’t be able to kill with them and he’ll get fat from snacking and become a couch kitty.
Ash Can
Maybe the bird was dumb enough to alight too close to Steve, and he rolled over onto it and smothered it. It’s probably just as well that the bird’s stupidity was removed from the gene pool
Gvg
My previous cat, housecat only, once caught a moth and celebrated by doing a little Hollywood Indian dance around in a circle. Multiple little heel kicks. I really wish I had had a video recorder but I hadn’t known she was going to do that. she also chased imaginary bugs when she was bored and there weren’t any real ones. she pretended so well I thought there was something wrong with my eyes because I couldn’t see the bug.
My cats have been house cats since my original childhood cats passed on. I had realized when I mentioned how old they were to friends parents that cats who went outdoors got hit by cars. people didn’t know cats can live to be 17 or more..
Ash Can
And lo and behold, after reading and commenting on this post, an ad for the St. Louis Cardinals shows up on my screen in the margin. Sic ’em, Steve! :D
p.a.
My neighbor fed the local feral, but she brought her kills to me. Usually mice or snakes. Would not let me near her; she just dropped off the carcasses and left.
Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
Our border collie, Rhea, killed a rat in the backyard once. She was really proud of herself.
Some time later, we had a mouse in the house and Rhea chased it. The three cats didn’t even look up from their naps. Slackers.
(Rereading that, it sounds as if our domicile is invaded by strange rodents all the time. Really, those were the only two in a whole lotta years.)
jl
@SiubhanDuinne:
” He dragged it into the house??
What was it, a fucking pelican? ”
Whatever it was, it was a mighty bird, a fierce and fell bird, slain in mortal combat in the savage neighborhood wilderness by Steve the Cat. It was a ghastly combat, a mighty feat, the stuff of legend.
The great carcass was well worthy of dragging, I am sure of it.
Suffern ACE
@p.a.: she was fed. She thought you looked skinny.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne: Okay, I larfed.
muddy
I saw my Diarmuid coming up through the neighbor’s yard with some kind of small mammal in his mouth earlier. I thought it’d be a gift for me, but it didn’t make it home. I hope it didn’t have fleas if he ate it. I hate looking for the “sesame seeds”.
JoyceH
@SiubhanDuinne:
Cats seem to like to drag their dead prey underneath them. My cats do that with the dish towels. I imagine their thought balloons – ‘here’s the mighty lion with its fresh kill…’
We haven’t had much in the way of big game indoors for my cats to hunt, though Liam can leap into the air and slap his floofy lil paws together and kill a fly or a moth. And then he eats them.
jl
@JoyceH:
” Liam can leap into the air and slap his floofy lil paws together and kill a fly or a moth. And then he eats them. ”
I had a cat that was expert at that. Except after that cat snagged the critter it did not know what to do with it. Paw on it, wander around, look at us like we might know, push it around on the rug with its paw, trying to decide what to do with it, chew on it a little and then spit it out.
After a few minutes we would throw the moth carcass away.
JoyceH
@jl:
I don’t have to worry about that – if Liam doesn’t hurry up and eat his bug, Jazzy (the dog) will snatch it up.
Another nice thing about having a dog – you never have to stoop over and pick up a dropped ice cube, the dog is right on it. I’ve gotten so I’ll deliberately drop an ice cube on the floor so Jazzy can have a treat. (I always say “Oops!” but she probably sees right through that.)
dirk
My buddy gets to go out into the backyard only when supervised. He really really wants to catch a squirrel or bird but lacks the skill. He did catch a lizard once, but he dropped it and I grabbed it and released it in a safe place. His second biggest catch was a grasshopper.
Warren Terra
There are people who are very passionate about housecats killing small vertebrates. I predict this post will set the cat among the pigeons.
David Koch
speaking of Predator versus Predator: sometimes it pays off being fat
Mnemosyne
@JoyceH:
Sometimes when we play with the feather toy, Charlotte will grab it out of my hand and carry the whole apparatus into the bedroom where she can gloat over it on the bed. We always make sure to tell her that she’s a mighty huntress even though she never gets to hunt anything bigger than a fly that stumbles into the apartment.
Damned at Random
I had a cat who deposited an (uninjured) baby mourning dove at my feet, followed a few hours later by another uninjured baby mourning dove. I took them to the local rescue expert and he told me baby doves eat “dove milk” and I would have to try mixing up a batch from baby cereal, but he had never successfully kept one alive.
Neither did I
muddy
@JoyceH: When I make chicken/beef stock, I cook it down until it’s quite concentrated and freeze it in ice cube trays for my later use. Sometimes I will give some to the dogs, they like the meat pops.
jl
@David Koch: Thanks for a harrowing story with a happy ending.
If it had been Tunch, that stupid hawk would have just pivoted over and buried its greedy hawk head deep into the ground.
Helen
What did you do with the bird, Cole? Did you roast it? Naked?
Mnemosyne
@Helen:
Cole or the bird?
Wait, I don’t think I want to know.
TaMara (BHF)
My big brave tuxedo male catches and kills my socks. Then he drags them into the living room. Sometimes I’m home, most times I’m not. I can be gone a half hour, walk in the front door to see five or six socks spread around the room, He’ll be peacefully sleeping on his window perch. No indication of the great battle that was waged while I ran errands.
NotMax
Might one humbly suggest crossing ‘Siegfried & Roy impersonator’ off your bucket list?
Helen
@Mnemosyne: Cole. He is famous (well famous here, anyway) for mopping the floor naked. Yeah I don’t get it either.
trollhattan
@David Koch:
Wow, dip Eddie’s tail in a cappuccino and you’ve got a Tunchelganger. He’s, erm, floofy.
Violet
@Howard Beale IV: Last week when my mom had surgery we were doing the pre-op insurance checks and bloodwork and all and the nurse walked us down this long hallway with plate glass windows on either side. The windows had ledges along the bottom and all along there were dead birds. It was clear they’d tried to fly through the hallway but hit the windows and died. Terrible look for the hospital pre-op area. “We’ll take great care of you…just like we did these birds!”
trollhattan
I’m voting Wyoming and Georgia off the island.
http://blog.estately.com/2014/05/you-can-learn-a-lot-about-america-from-each-states-internet-search-history/
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
My (original) home state of Illinois has some interesting searches:
California’s are a little dull, I think, though I suspect about 90 percent of the Pokemon searches were done by my niece:
Warren Terra
@trollhattan: yeah, no, sorry, the content at your link is not true.
cckids
@TaMara (BHF): My tortie, Hermione, kills Nerf darts DEAD. When we hear her thumping & growling, we know there will be a massacre when we get upstairs.
wasabi gasp
Quietly sneak into a big bird costume.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
So, last weekend three Big 10 softball teams won their regional despite the fact that Minnesota was the only top seed and host. Only two regional hosts lost their tournament: Arizona State to Michigan and Missouri to Nebraska; all of the other hosts moved on.
So, tonight, #3 in the country Florida State loses 17-3 to Michigan. And #2 Alabama had to score a run in the bottom of the 7th to take their game to extra innings; it’s now in the 11th.
Minnesota doesn’t start it’s Super Regional against #1 Oregon until 10pm Eastern on Saturday.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
Fuck. Alabama wins on a homer in the bottom of the 12th.
YellowJournalism
Aw, what a vicious puddy-tat.
Keith P
I’ve had several killers. The first was mine since a kitten, and he didn’t touch grass until he was about 5 years old. Killed birds and mice and even caught a baby rabbit (tore its leg up, but I released it out front for the hawks to get) His littermate wasn’t a hunter, but he tore the shit out of a bird that ran into my window. The next killer was a Katrina rescue cat that was very prolific. I caught him carrying a dead bird back from across the street. He’d leave them on the back porch after eating their chest. And now I have one killer left. She’s gotten a couple of birds but is mainly interested in frogs. Got a couple of kills and sits at the edge of my hot-tub-turned pond staring at them. Two others are fat and lazy.
This is unfortunate because I found I have mice right now. There’s evidence in the attic, and I found chewed up butcher’s twine in a drawer yesterday. My killer won’t come inside since the weather’s so nice, so I’d need another cat to kill the mouse/mice.
hells littlest angel
If you praised him for it, get ready to find small dead animals left as gifts — in your shoe, on your pillow, and in other special intimate locations.
Johannes
Cue NY Times comment section: “Who will speak for the songbirds?”
different-church-lady
@Warren Terra: Holy christ, people on the internet actually cannot identify blatant humor anymore. I mean, “Vox… NO SHIT, VOX!”
sm*t cl*de
A De Havilland flying boat.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: I would have thought it was some kind of bird of paradise or honeycatcher or something ‘exotic’ that flew into your home. Not a common sparrow.
Paul in KY
@jl: Most of my cats will eat various bugs. If they don’t eat them (ants, for example) I know they must not taste good.
Paul in KY
@Damned at Random: 58 more of those & you could have baked a fine baby dove pie.
Paul in KY
@Keith P: Bring them in house & stop feeding them. They will find those mices.
southend
@Warren Terra: Our cat is a stone-cold, remorseless sociopathic hit-man. You name it, he’s brought it home. Or we can hear him crunchin away on his prize beneath the neighbor’s old truck. They’re cats doin cat-stuff. Circle of life (and death, lots of fang-y, throats-ripped-out death) and all that shit.
Graham
Steve, vicious hunter. Good kitty.
J R in WV
We had a gray tabby named Timidthy, (not mis-spelled) who discovered that if he hid his prey from us at the front door by pushing his chin up into his throat, he could take the mice and voles and moles into the bathtub, where they couldn’t get away. He wouldn’t have to disable them by breaking or eating a leg or two. They would scurry around, and he could pounce on them lightly over and over again.
(no doubt emotionally hard on the rodents!)
Then one day he tried it with a sparrow! Took it into the bath room, jumped onto the side of the tub, pushed the shower curtain away, and released the bird into the house! What a cat’sasstrophe! He was just sitting there in the tub, saying, “That’s not fair, it flew away from the magic tub!”
sharon
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/science/that-cuddly-kitty-of-yours-is-a-killer.html?_r=0
steverinoCT
I had a cat that proudly brought home the plastic bread wrapper she had chased down and killed. She also got a rat. Once, I saw her on the porch steps acting strangely; all of a sudden she leaped off the porch into the 6-inch snow and came up with a mouse! Shaking her head to kill it and scattering blood. She nailed it by sound.
After I moved out, my mother’s cats liked my visits because I would get pizza and give them the crusts to play with and eat. My mother took to making her own, little pizza-dough 3-inch rolls that they could hunt.
Parrotlover77
This shit pisses me off. This is why cats need to be indoors at all times. and no, they don’t care about being outside as much as their humans think they do.