From Pine View Farm

The Cat’s Meow 3

Daniel Ruth on the killing machines:

You know where you stand with dogs like Gracie and Lizzie, who are perfectly content as long as you give them your undivided attention — or a chew toy to be named later.

Meanwhile, you know a duplicitous, grumpy Mr. Buttons is somewhere else in the house plotting your demise, quite possibly over the humiliation of being named Mr. Buttons.

Cats are the animal world’s equivalent of North Korea — distant, aloof, secretive and unpredictably dangerous.

It turns out that this was true all along.

Then there’s this.

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3 comments

  1. George Smith

    February 1, 2013 at 1:32 pm

    Having had cats that go in and out for a long time, yeah, they were hard on some of the local fauna. The rodents got the worst of it and when we moved to Pasadena the yard had them, mice and rats. The cats didn’t eliminate all of them but they did, uh, bite into the problem and move them mostly out of the yard. Squirrels to a lesser extent. It’s a stupid or slow squirrel that got nabbed by one of our cats but, occasionally, it did happen. Squirrels, however, never really experienced a noticeable decline. Birds — hummingbirds not affected. Crows, not affected. Jays, occasionally. The worst thing for crows and jays has been west nile. Mockingbirds — as adults, only very rarely. The cats were hardest on the nests which mockers do not put very high. Lizards also took a beating, I used to regularly rescue those that were still alive and being ‘played’ with.  

     
  2. Frank

    February 1, 2013 at 10:18 pm

    http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/why-cats-play-with-prey

     

    On the farm, we found cats useful creatures to keep down the rodents that wanted to eat the corn crop.

     
  3. George Smith

    February 2, 2013 at 1:50 pm

    Interesting. Our two cats made a team with the neighbor’s; I called them the Three Cat-keteers. And more than once they had a young rat in a circle, batting it between them until it just collapsed. Then they disappeared it.