E Pluribus Unum

Squirrels?! That cat is bad.

Heh. He stows the headless (and front-paw-less) bodies under our bed.

Partial list of other catches brought into the house (dead and alive):

mice
rats
crows
lizards
moles
snakes
bluejay (shrieking in distress! I still get the chills remembering
that one)

...and God knows what else that has slipped my mind right now.

P.S. No armadilloes. Yet.

What, no bats?

Our cat Biko is the St. Fravcis of Assisi of the feline world. He's as tough as nails when it comes to other cats and dogs. I've seen him charge an attacking husky, which backed off pretty damned quick, but I've also seen him lying on the ground surrounded by feeding birds, have seen him sniff noses with a squirrel, and had him follow the escaped household rat around the house all night without touching him.

He used to be a hunter, and watched him take out a crow once, in midair yet. Dunno what happened to him. He's mellowed a lot.

By the way, cat's bringing prey home for the household is their way of telling you that you're crappy hunters, and here, practice with this ...

I thought it was his way of saying he loved me and wanted me to share his bounty.

P.S. And no, thanks God, no bats.

I thought it was his way of saying he loved me ...

Dude, you can't even catch a headless squirrel, for his perspective. It's pity.

...from his perspective, that is.

Man, I've had some mighty hunters in my dozen or so cats, perhaps none more so (everything on your list) than one of my current declawed 6 pounders (my wife's first cats) but I have never known any of them to take on adult grey squirrels to the death. That makes intimidating dogs look like cat's play.

Props to Itchy.

I'll pass that along!

I had twin black cats that were hunters. One of them went so far as to hunt birds by stalking them up in trees. You could look up and see him crawling out to the end of a branch in quiet pursuit of his prey. He looked like a panther.

"I had twin black cats that were hunters."

Funny, the 6 pounders are twin black females. "Tina" and "Aretha", my wife's favorite "sisters" (I know). Tina is the huntress, Aretha just plays one in the back yard.

Mine were both males ("Flat Black" and "Selective Surface" -- I was in the solar energy business back then).

The tree-stalker died very young, sustaining some sort of blow and limping home to die in my arms. His brother lived for over 15 years after that, becoming quite the hunter himself.

By then, my mother had taken him in and he spent the rest of his life catching rabbits and pheasants in her yard in the city of Detroit.

Yes -- pheasants in the city. Seems the population of Detroit has fallen so precipitously over the decades that there are now large tracts of land that are essentially rural.

P.S. Here's a thought: the twin black cats benefitted from camouflage the same way Itchy does.

And, one more thing: Itchy's brother Scratchy was also black, but he didn't live long enough to develop any possible hunting skills. Hit by a car.

Wah.

"Here's a thought: the twin black cats benefitted from camouflage the same way Itchy does."

Yeah, the clawless Tina sits inside the shrubbery waiting for the unsuspecting and I've seen her catch birds out of mid-air. Amazing beasts.

We must enjoy them more than we hate all the death - their prey and them - or we wouldn't keep adopting them.