Does anyone feed their cats live mice???

It wouldn't even dawn on me to do so.. I couldn't do it.

Please, no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Imagine the terror the mouse experiences. In the wild, at least they have a chance to get away.

Cats are fine with good cat food.

It sounds like Australia has much more humane laws regarding animals. I think declawing is illegal there, too.

I feed frozen mice to my snakes, but it's never occurred to me to feed them to my cats! (Usually I'm just concerned about making sure the kitties don't get at the mice while they're thawing!)

Delilah is indoor/outdoor, and she does hunt and sometimes eat wild mice. It really grosses me out, though, to think about what kind of parasites those mice are carrying. (Delilah gets wormed routinely.)

I don't think I'd feel confident about the quality of diet if I fed them mice, since I really couldn't know how well-fed (and thus nutritious) the mice are. Granted, I don't worry about that too much with my snakes, but I also don't have any other options with them.

I think I'll stick to canned food, and let them play hunter with the bugs that get in the house in summer.

LOL, not on purpose

(gross alert...)
However, Bailey vomited a mouse tail just one week ago in the morning Guess it wasn't too digestible for him....

I've never seen a mouse in this house before, but I've always said, Lord help any furry little creature that tries to take sancuary in this house!

When my three who go out catch mice I try to get them away from them, usually unsuccessfully though. They don't always eat them - Ellie lays them in rows on the terrace sometimes - the record was 10 in one day. Other times she eats them very carefully, leaving the head and the guts on the doormat for me to clear up. But I do worm them regularly as a result.

I wouldn't feed live but I did buy some polar mice from the pet store which are free of yuckies to feed to the babies once they get over onto the raw a little more.

tabitha is an indoor/outdoor cat, has been since she was old enough and vaccinated enough to go out. she regularly catches and eats mice and birds, something i find both upsetting and distressing. but she is only following her instincts and as a result, at 8 years old she has teeth as white and gleaming as my 2 kittens, i'm sure partly down to her diet.

having said that they is absolutely no way i would feed live mice to my cats. to me that is nothing more than murder. also, as someone else pointed out, the mice at least have a chance to get away in the wild, plus they will be living their lives as they should, free, not in some cramped, dirty cage.

it is a highly emotive subject as i have heard people say that by letting your cat outside you are actively encouraging them to kill. i personally am more concerned with giving my cat the best life possible and if he/she is a hunter then that is something in their genes. my rb cat sinbad also went outside, but the most he ever caught was a selection of exotic and dangerous leaves.

I am a fancy mouse breeder as a hobby and take care of my mice/feed them *very* well, however the coats that come out undesirable end up being food for my incredibly active and healthy cats. I understand how some may see it as cruel, and I don't love doing it, but the average outdoor cat kills 1-3 beings within 17-30 hours outside as it is often endangering and literally pushing species past the brink of extinction. My 5 cats are all indoors for their safety and the mice provide an incredible outlet and enrichment, keeping their bodies lean and toned while providing nutrients no any day cat food could provide. Judge as you wish, but yes, it's absolutely an option and they've never been hurt in the process past a nip or two. They can consume adult mice bones and all, it's how they were built to function after all.

Let me know if anyone out there is interested in pursuing this method and I can help you. Not every cat will be interested however, best to start from a young age. My youngest two Oz and Bartok get VERY restless without after a couple days, they really do appreciate it.  

ok, I tried it once. Bought a feeder mouse, fed it its last meal of leftover pizza, and let it loose in the living room.

So of course the guys went crazy, complete with wild growling, and using it kind of like a football (one carrying and growling, the other chasing).

Being the emphatic sort I couldn't continue watching and rescued the poor thing (a bit soggy from being dragged all over, but otherwise unharmed) and put it up in the garage together with the rest of the pizza.

They get frozen mice now. They actually eat them.

we live at the end of a dirt road in the woods, and our basement is over-run with mice, and we were catching one in our Have-A-Heart trap at least once / twice a day - which i would then walk down our 100 yard driveway and release near the dirt road (zero traffic)... as we were already feeding our cat frozen raw food (which i kept reading is not as good as live prey eaten fresh), we began letting the mice out of the trap with our cat sitting next to it out in the yard... the first couple got away because he wasn't quite expecting the mouse to come bolting out of the trap - and sometimes he would be looking away for a moment when the mouse made its dash for freedom... but then he figured out what was going on, and now he is on them in a flash within a few feet of exiting the trap - and we limit him to one mouse a day... 

our cat is a stray that showed up on our doorstep from out of the woods 6 years ago, skinny and bedraggled, and had obviously been living exclusively on his hunting skills for a while... since we adopted him and began feeding him and fattening him up, he still very much enjoys hunting, stalking and catching an occasional mouse, rat, vole, mole, bird or lizard - and who am i to judge that as wrong? although i admittedly did take a bird out of his mouth once because the noise it was making was so disheartening... people who are squeamish about their cat eating live prey should take a trip to the slaughter house where their cat's food come from - but of course they choose to remain in denial over the insensitive depravity in slaughterhouses they are supporting when buying processed cat food (frozen, canned or kibble)... out-of-sight is out-of-mind...

he generally eats the entire mouse (or whatever he catches), perhaps leaving only a few tidbits behind, and normally doesn't play with them - they are dead within a couple minutes of being caught and eaten in the next 5-10 minutes... i am only saving him the trouble of hunting and stalking... some of the healthiest cats i've seen are barn cats that live exclusively on mice, lizards, voles, moles, birds and rats - and have never eaten processed/manufactured cat food, seen a vet or been vaccinated... 

he just finished his breakfast mouse about an hour ago at 11 AM (that was caught last night) and he is now up on the observation/cat-nap platform i built for him 8 feet above our rear deck - completely ZZZZed out, dreaming of how tasty that mouse was... we're saving money on cat food, he's eating better than ever, and i don't have to walk all the way down to the end of the driveway anymore to release them (and they were probably back to the basement within a couple days)... 

EnzoLeya said:

 
Quote:

Originally Posted by jane_vernon Even the zoo's are not allowed to use live prey to feed to their carnivores.

That's a really good point, thank you for that!!!!

Click to expand...

I think that is mainly a safety thing so they don't "get the taste"  that or a liability / protestors thing since the zoo's are not like someones individual home, and is for profit usually.  of course  then look at how sea world did their orcas in

I've thought about this a lot.

Of course I've also wondered why there are no cat foods of mouse formulations.  Mice really are perfect for cats. I really have no issues with cats being given life mice... that's what nature intended for them.  Cats were geared to hunt live prey & eat a fresh kill. So many cats become incredibly unhealthy on heavily processed foods that are so far removed from their natural diet, it amazes me any of the cats on them are healthy at all.  So my mission is to find the "best of the worst", I guess.  I ust adopted an awesome rescue cat a couple days ago & I'm trying to decide on what will be the best diet for her. It's been about 10 years since I've had a cat, and I had hoped that  some pet-food manufacturers would have had progressed to mouse based diets for cats...  by now.  Much to my disappointment, they have not. 

I see lots of minimal ingredient cat "premium"  foods that still contain stuff that cats would not naturally be eating... like potatoes and Turkey. 

Please, in what world do these cats hunt turkeys? lol 

http://www.zootoo.com/pet-product/cat-treats2/pogos-freeze-dried-mouse-treats   I used to carry these years ago, early in my business (now closed).  Very popular!

Wow.  Thanks for sharing the link.

I can't believe someone protested that the mice were intentionally killed & not by cats. lol

Because of course... all the popular animal ingredients in cat foods are unintentionally killed , not!  "Unintentionally". would mean what?   maybe --- roadkill or disease.  Pure silliness!

I'm not comfortable feeding live rodents (not a fair fight, IMO. In the wild they can escape), but I do buy pre-killed rats for my snake, and the cats get to eat his refused meals . Some of the cats just really love those rats. There are a lot of sites you can get frozen mice/rats from. . .I used www.rodentpro.com but there are others. And the prices are really very reasonable.

I could never feed my cat live mice.  I couldn't feed live anything to my animals unless I had a reptile that ate worms or something.  But that is just me, I just would feel way too bad for them not being able to have a chance!  I would probably save the mouse and keep it!  

So it's bad to feed your cat live mouses, because we (human) feel bad about it, but is it better for your cat? what's the difference with letting it outside and do it to wildlife? Should we stop them by letting them inside and feed them frozen food so they can feel "human"?

Guccio said:

what's the difference with letting it outside and do it to wildlife?

Click to expand...

Because outside the mouse has a chance to get away. Fair chase, etc.

It probably is better for the cat. But, IMO, humans deliberately facilitating the torture of domestic mice is not acceptable.

My cats go outside, and they kill mice, birds, rats and whatever they can find. I do get that’s nature, and I’m happy we don’t get mice in the house. However, I would never give them a live anything. They don’t go for a clean kill, they will play with their prey for ages and let it suffer. I do try to save some of the things they catch, If they bring it inside or to the house while it’s still alive and not too injured. So seeing that I have problem letting them kill what they find outside, I could never bring myself to be the one who gives them something living to play with/kill. I used to have rats, so I have a softspot.