Wet Mouse Syndrome????

Im wondering if anyone else experiences this! I have quite a few catnip mice for my kitten and older cat! Everytime my kitten plays with them (btw they are her favorite toy) she picks them up in her mouth and puts them into her water bowl... Eventually she pulls them out of the water bowl (creating a mess) and continues on! What is the obsession of drowning the mouse?

She only drowns the prepack mice that are red, green, and yellow if you know what Im talking bout!

Maybe she's trying to make catnip tea?

The mice here don't suffer from drowning. I do have some little home-made catnip toys that the cats like to gnaw/suck on ...they get sopping wet with SPIT. Yuck. LOL

I read somewhere that cats like to put their toys in their food/water area because that is a "safe place" for them. That's a place that is generally the same every day, in the same place, that they often visit. It's like home base for the kitty. Beandip had a shoestring he used to drag up to the food bowl, and put the end of it in the dry food.

LOL that's too funny catnip tea! I've had weed tea way back in the day and if catnip tea is as effective as that well then I understand why she would do it! LOL a safe place? That is so silly yet understandable! The older cat will do that everyonce in awhile! At least she isn't putting it into her wet food... But the dry food wouldn't be so bad! She is a goof! She does that with all of her mice! Just soaks em!

My Juno will put her milk jug rings in her water, she then fishes them out, puts them back in repeatedly. I put her food and wter on a cookiesheet with 1 inch sides it makes it easier to clean up.

I find black furry mice and mylar crinkle balls in my water fountain, and hairties in the food dish.

Cats... So silly and strange sometimes! That's why we love em!

My new cat Tomoe seems to do the same thing. I had never seen it before, but my husband went to check on her one morning and found one mouse toy in her food bowl and one in her water bowl! I thought that was pretty funny. Our other cat only puts his toys in his food bowl, never the water bowl.

Mine put toy mice in their food quite often, but not so much in the water. They do sell stuff to make catnip tea for cats at one of the herbal shops!!

Originally Posted by pawsandwhiskers

Mine put toy mice in their food quite often, but not so much in the water. They do sell stuff to make catnip tea for cats at one of the herbal shops!!

Click to expand...

Really maybe my Ill try that with the kitten! She does this on a constant basis! What a goof ball!

Originally Posted by trixie23

Im wondering if anyone else experiences this! I have quite a few catnip mice for my kitten and older cat! Everytime my kitten plays with them (btw they are her favorite toy) she picks them up in her mouth and puts them into her water bowl... Eventually she pulls them out of the water bowl (creating a mess) and continues on! What is the obsession of drowning the mouse?

She only drowns the prepack mice that are red, green, and yellow if you know what Im talking bout!

Click to expand...

hah, Trixie, I just saw this thread. I have 2 cats that do this every day. Cracks me up every time too. Of course my 2 toddlers have witnessed this so they think will help by putting cat toys in the water now.

The weirdest thing though--and one of the reasons the TOILET SEAT DOWN rule was mandated was because Roo would drop his mice toys in the toilet!

That just wasn't cool.

Oh wow my cats havent gone as far to dropping mice in the toilet... LOL yucky! Im just paranoid and want the toilet seat down because it looks nicer and because Im afraid the kitten will fall in! She's kind of clumsy!

Originally Posted by trixie23

Oh wow my cats havent gone as far to dropping mice in the toilet... LOL yucky! Im just paranoid and want the toilet seat down because it looks nicer and because Im afraid the kitten will fall in! She's kind of clumsy!

Click to expand...

We always closed the seats but a friend or family member will be over and someone would invariably leave the seat up.

You probably had to 'be there' to find it funny but that one night my husband called his friend and all I heard was "Brent, we *told* you to keep the lid down; Roo went and dumped his mouse in there!"

Awww that is cute and yucky at the same time! Gotta love cats and their goofy little quirks!

Hah! My cats do that too. Here is a picture I took one of the last times it happened.... Don't mind the food all over the floor!

Awww! My cats get food all over the place and litter too!

Mine don't do that, but they'll drag their mice and any other toy into a cardboard box that's on the floor. And they frequently steal things that don't belong to them and drag them into the box. I wake up every morning to missing objects, and look in the box and sure enough there they are! Last night, Leo attacked a roll of toilet paper and put every shredded piece into the box.

Glad to hear Smokey's not the only one who tries to drown her mice! :-)

Oddly enough, Smokey only puts her mice in the toilet and never puts them in her water bowl. She fishes them out of the toilet though, and I find them sopping wet laying around the house sometimes, bleh. We have to enforce the "Toilet Lid Down" here too.

She used to pick up any clothes I had on the floor and drop those in the water dish..... Silly baby.

I'm glad people ask questions like this because it gives me ideas for my blog. I looked this up because I couldn't make even an educated guess on why cats might do this. According to About.com they are hiding their kill from other predators.

If anyone's interested you can find a link to the original article in my blog post Drowning Cat Toys -- When Dead Just Isn't Dead Enough

Ver interesting though they should think that over a little better since water is transparent lol!

Lol, true, but it would never occur to a cat that they might be wrong!