How do you teach your cat to kill the mousies? Simple - you've got to THINK like a cat. Let me explain what is going on in your cat's brain.

Cats are trained by momma cat to catch mice in a sequence. First she brings a very dead mouse to the kittens and they have fun bapping it around and pouncing on it. This will happen a few times.

Next -- and this is key for humans to pay attention to -- BECAUSE the kittens showed so much interest in the dead mousie, momma cat realizes they are smart enough and physically skilled enough to learn to catch a slightly less dead mousie. How does she know? Because she watched them playing with it, tossing it around and making a general fuss over it.

If the kittens continue to show interest, momma cat will continue to bring mousies who are more and more lively, coaching them along in their skills until they graduate to being real mousie hunters on their own.

When humans see the very alive mousie being let go around their bare naked feet and then leap about, yip and yell, and finally run to catch the mousie in a container as it scoots away, that's exactly what the cat is looking for. That they show an interest in catching the mouse.

That cat will, sure as can be, start bringing home MORE partly dead/very live mousies.

How can you get your cat to stop bringing live mousies home and releasing them? I don't know the answer to that. But from a cat's point of view, each time you make a fuss over that mousie, it encourages the cat to bring home more of them in the hope that someday you'll graduate to catching these mousies all on your own!

Copyright © Jacqueline Freeman
June 27, 2006

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