Gift from the Cat: What IS this thing? (Warning: mildly gruesome)
 

Now that I've got your attention...

My cat has now delivered two of these critters. It's shaped like a mouse, but it's WAY bigger than any mouse I've ever seen. It's not shaped at all like a rat. I don't think my yard has moles or voles or wombats. It almost looks like an escaped gerbil or something.

We laid the ruler down next to it for size comparison purposes. Anyone know what my cat caught?

<img src="http://www.danray.net/images/critter1.jpg">

<img src="http://www.danray.net/images/critter2.jpg">

It looks like what we call a field mouse to me...

Field Mouse picture:
http://www.wilmette39.org/virtualmus...ell/mouse2.jpg
The body types seem different-- rats are a little sleeker than a rounded mouse.


the tail and ears suggest rat

though googling gerbil brought up tis piic
http://www.pets-warehouse.com/Smanim...ges/Gerbil.jpg

Maybe... could someone have set their gerbils free?

I want to say deer mouse, but it's way to large to be one.

It's a big mouse. I've caught hundreds on the farm in Kansas.

Could it be a big-eared gopher? Nest of baby rats nearby?

Field mouse, deer mouse...whatever. It's a dead mouse.

Well whatever it is, just be sure to give your cat a nice thank-you card. Must keep up with basic courtesies and all that, right?

I think the cat needs a new name... How does The Enforcer sound? Cat will take care of any critter that is fool enough to stumble onto your property...

Looks like a mouse to me.

I add my vote to field mouse.

That is exactly the reason my two cats are indoor cats.

Well-noshed field mouse.

Yeah, another vote for mouse.

awww poor thing :/ and yea it looks like the picture mal posted

Yeah, that's a mouse. A very impressive one.

When your cat thinks this highly of you as to deliver a delicacy (no, 2 OF THEM!!), there are common ways to reciprocate:

1. Give your cat a tounge bath. It takes a while. I suggest drinking plenty of water so you dont dehydrate.
2. Let your cat sleep on your pillow. Sharing the nesting spot is a great way to say thanks.
3. Cook said present in a french demiglaze and present BACK to the cat. I would take the hair off first. Burnt hair smells really bad in the oven and may upset your cat's palate.


Seriously though, we had a problem like that when I was a kid (cat presents, sometimes really nasty) and we took an easy measure to fix it...

A bell on the collar. A little cute bell allows potential prey time to react before your "Enforcer" pounces for the kill.

The bells a good idea though our cat has overcome this by learning how to catch birds and mice without the bell sounding. How she does this no one knows but she routinely leaves presents of small rodents at the front door-she is kept in overnight- We used to have a cat door for her but she would then leave her gifts to us on or around our bed, or bring live critters in and let them go and chase them....fun, fun, fun.

My parent's cat used to show her love by bringing very large critters... She was a spunky lb cat-- runt of the litter but major moxie. She once brought to their house a rattle snake, rabbits by the dozen, birds she thought were very interactive toys because they didn't die right away, they'd flop around on the deck for a while, a baby racoon, and the worse she did was a baby beaver (there was many acres of protected wetlands behind their house -- it was a virtual smorgasboard for cats back there with all the critters)

It was dangerous to walk out on to the deck if Mittens had just come into the house because more than likely, there was a critter there. It was even better when she figured out how to open the screen door on the deck by herself, so her presents would end up somewhere in the house, usually my parents bed... ICK!

If that's a mouse, that is the biggest mouse I've ever seen. My cat catches mice all the time and they are a lot smaller than that monster.

Good Kitty


Looks like a large field mouse to me, our's brings home "treats" all the time. At least your cat kills em first.

It's the biggest damn mouse I ever saw, if it's a mouse...

The first one, we found in the mouth of our dog, actually. We'd assumed it was the dog that caught it--though she's a total wuss and it seemed very out of character for her.

This one was lying dead just outside the gate on the back deck, where the dog couldn't possibly have put it. So it has to be the cat delivering these delicacies.

Field mouse: possible... Maybe she's scooping them up and bopping them on the head... Though Mal's picture seemed off somehow--the ears are wrong, and the body seemed a little too round or something.

Rat: Not likely. I know what a rat looks like. This guy is bigger and rounder.

exactly my choice too, I've lived on an acreage for years, and have seen some mice as big as that one.

Our boy cat has 4 bells, 3 under his neck and the fourth one sewed to the top of his collar. The lady in the pet store said that a clever cat will hold their head down on a single bell, rendering it soundless. Our girl cat has no bell at all, and no clue how to catch anything :)

I also vote for mouse - this could've been a poll!

It looks like what we in central PA call a vole, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vole which is also known as a "field mouse" in some parts of the country but not what I would call a field mouse. Growing up, the family cat would catch those damn things all the time, but never any other rodents. Looks like they make good prey :)

ratbastid, you happen to have any companies with the acronym of NIMH nearby? ;)

Whaddya know, it does look like a vole. I don't know why I always assumed voles were teeny little critters - must have had them confused with moles, but that picture and description (3-7") on wikipedia are dead on.

And Fremen, that's not funny ;) My cat did NOT kill Mrs. Frisby!!!

There are a couple families of native mice, and they're hard to tell apart without looking at their teeth with a magnifying glass . . . but without the teeth, the general rule is if the hair in front of the ear is long enough to cover a considerable part of the ear, it's a microtine, otherwise its a crecitine. "Vole" is just a synonym for several microtine mice. The crecitine family contains mice and rats, while the microtine family contains just mice (plus the muskrat).

By the look of the ear there and the hair covering part of it, I'd vote for a microtine, like a meadow mouse or meadow vole. There is a lot of size variation, these guys can get up to over 8 inches including the tail, which is about half the total length.

The size cutoff between mice and rats is about 10 inches including the tail.

Give the cat some salmon buffet!

Wow, that's a mouse all right, just like the ones my kitty catches! Not so much any more given that she's nearly 18 years of age (May 10th!) but when she was a little kitty (well, she's always been a little kitty) she used to bring us mice, moles, birds, and snakes by the bucket-full. She caught her first mole when she was 3 months old--my dad had to stab it with a pitchfork to get it to die because she was playing with it.

One summer it was particularly hot out and so everyone at my house (including my cousins who were visiting) slept out on our big deck. My cousin woke us up the next morning screaming--a dead mouse body was laying atop her sleeping bag. Where was the head? Right inside the sleeping bag. We had to explain to her that it just meant that Fuzzy loved her a lot.

Fuzzy got worms every so often because of her hunting habits, but otherwise no harm, no foul--we tried a bell but WE found it annoying. Eventually, when we moved to the suburbs from the country, we had her declawed and she became an "indoor" cat. When my parents moved back to the country, they worried she wouldn't be able to protect herself. Then they started finding a regular stream of dead mice, all with their necks broken. Yeah, I don't think not having claws has been a problem for my fierce little kitty, even at her age.

I guess I should not have looked at this thread right after reading about the lobster.

My family used to have a cat a long time ago that brought home a snake that was still alive. imagine the surprise on my mom's face when she went to dispose of the snake (who was only playing dead).

Little Kitty foo-foo hopping through the forest
Picking up the field mice and bopping on thier heads.