Eeek Mouse!

I was just cuddling on the sofa with Nikita when suddenly woosh! off she went with rather impressive acceleration from pretty much asleep.

What had given her such a boost?

Yep, a mouse running around in my living room. Nikita though this was the best thing ever and caught it very quickly. Then she paraded around with the mouse still alive and dangling from her mouth. I think she was deciding where she wanted to put it. Then she dropped it in my shoe to fish it out again. I was at this point ready to try and catch the mouse myself and get it out of the flat but Nikita is a better mouser than I am.

I grabbed my camera and snapped a few photos but then when I was starting to get serious about wanting it gone Nikita dropped it again to hunt it some more and the dapper mouse escaped. Heh..

In short Nikita thinks killing mice is a waste of a perfectly good toy and now she's wandering around and whining at me that the fun self propelled toy is gone! it was FUN! and she wants it back

The photos are here:
http://svg.crowblanket.com/nikita/20...e/DSC_0079.jpg
http://svg.crowblanket.com/nikita/20...e/DSC_0081.jpg
http://svg.crowblanket.com/nikita/20...e/DSC_0082.jpg

I'm not linking them directly in case you'd rather not see them. The mouse was unharmed though through it all, just understandably completely terrified.

Very impressive photos - She just wanted a play toy!

That's awesome - cool that you got some photos of it!.

You've taught her well. She's a real hunter now

Nakita and Anna would make wonderful playmates!! She loves catching mice and playing with them too!!

awww....she looks so proud of herself in that first picture! I remember that little "bring it back" meow well....she's so good at hunting

The thought of mice running around the house makes me , but it's kind of cool for your girl to have a chance to really hunt...better than any cat toy you can buy.

Judging from the way Bella & Stan went nuts for the bat in our house this summer, I'm betting she's a pretty happy camper

Oh wow, your cat is both gorgeous AND a great hunter. Congrats to her on her first catch.

On the other hand, that poor mouse. XD Can you imagine how scary that would be? I watched a cat catch a mouse once when I was walking home from the bus stop. It was really fun to watch. I'm all about the way of nature, and love watching videos of animals hunting ... but still, can you imagine if you were minding your own business and got snatched up out of nowhere by something HUGE? I know if I were that mouse, I wouldn't have had the presence of mind to escape, and I would have been Nikita's Petrified Mouse toy forever after. XD

We had a mouse in our house too. Our boy Snowball was napping on the couch, then all of a sudden, he dashes down to look under the couch. He starts mewing loudly - we've never heard that mew from him before. So, we had to watch what he was doing. Snowball wouldn't let any other cats come near him. Then, we see that he had a mouse in his mouth. He got to it before we could save it...

She had a look of real determination on her face.

We haven't had any mice in our new house (which Tailer considers to be a real disadvantage to the new place), but we had a few on occasion at our old apartment. Tailer LOVED the fun toys, too!

I'd try to catch the poor things so I could humanely release them outside, but Tailer's a WAY better mouser than I am. They's inevitably get away from me, but he'd catch them and play them to death. Then he'd sit over them and meow his head off. DH always figured he was saying "Come and see my killl!" but I know he was really saying "Come and fix my toy!"

So far, through two apartments, our mouse count is:

Ginger - 1
Ferris - 0
Penny - 0
Max - 1

I (being a giant, evil human) flushed the one Ginger caught as I thought she had killed it. Unfortunately, it had just been playing dead, and "came back to life" just as it was swirling down the pot.

The one Max caught just recently was never actually seen, but left behind quite a bit of blood, as Max bit it when he nabbed it.

Lately, Ginger has been stalking the baseboards, and Max has been stalking the lower cabinets, so I think there are more running around unseen, but we have seen no evidence of them other than the cats being hyper-focused on the unseen.

What a good kitty! And she looks so good doing it too. Really, she's a beautiful cat.

Originally Posted by GingersMom

Lately, Ginger has been stalking the baseboards, and Max has been stalking the lower cabinets, so I think there are more running around unseen, but we have seen no evidence of them other than the cats being hyper-focused on the unseen.

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That was how we found out we had a mouse in one of our apartments. Raven dispatched it before we got to it though.

I was glad the one time we had a mouse that the cats got it...we tried several traps and baits to no avail. I figure mousing when needed (and that's pretty rare) is my cats' only job, for that they are fed and pampered.

For a while I lived in a house with a cat flap, so my cat Rascal (and the other cats) were free to go in and out any time. Boy did Rascal bring in lots and lots of stuff he caught outside. Mice, birds, frogs, snakes, even a baby rabbit once. He was quite the hunter there. Some were alive, some were dead, some he brought in while I was at work or asleep and I'd wake up or come home to find them. If they were alive, I'd try to catch them (not always very easily done!) and put them outside, then keep the cat in to make sure he didn't catch it right away again.

Fun times.

Gandalf is my "mighty hunter". He loves to go outside and find small rodents to "play" with. One night, my ex-roommate started screaming like a little girl. (He is 6'4, 350 lbs so this was hysterical.) I ran into the kitchen and a tiny little mouse had jumped out of the garbage can from under the sink and ran under the couch. So I went and got Gandalf. Of course he was asleep on Bo's bed. I put him in front of the couch, lifted the little skirt and said "Do your thing, hunter." Gandalf sniffed the air, looked under the couch and then laid down in the middle of the living room floor! I was like, "Good Grief! If you were outside, you would have had him down in ten seconds." I thought the whole incident was quite comical. My ex-roommate said " If a mouse is brave enough to come into a house with 8 natural predators, he deserves to live." Needless to say, we never actually saw the mouse again so either he escaped or somebody had a midnight snack. And knowing my fat and happy cats......he escaped.