Yard Cat

The Ginger cat where I live ,is a serial killer and I havnt seen a rat in ages. He has taken to climbing onto the roof of the indoor school, he then enters via one of the ridge vents and hides ontop of the main girders..........and waits! Till a hapless pigeon wanders up on the web of the girder ,......AND IS MET WITH THE PAW OF DEATH. He is fast and lethal. Good pusseycat.
 
I've had/have two neutered males-both absolute dustbins and killing machines-one picked up as a stray so used to hunting and the other from good mousing stock. I am very rural, next to a large farm and keep poultry-no sign of rats anywhere.
We got the original cat to sort out a mouse problem and he did that within a week or so. I couldn't get any sense from two local branches of the CPL, so first cat came from a local shelter and the second from a farm.
 
If you can get a couple of feral or semi ferals, they will really help. We've noticed an increase since losing our two main mousers.

We still put down poison and bait boxes but it smells very bitter to cats/dogs. They won't eat it.
 
splashgirl45 said:
check out S N I P.....they are always looking for stable or farm homes for feral cats and they provide a starter kit and will deliver up to 4 hours drive from London. www.snipcats.org we were overrun with rats at one of my old yards and didn't want to use poison as we had dogs, we got 4 feral cats and they used to kill the juvenile rats and it seemed to deter the big ones as we didn't see any evidence of rats after the cats had been with us for a couple of months. a couple of them got quite tame so we could stroke them but the other 2 stayed wild so its luck which you get....best idea we ever had...
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SNIP are fantastic! My 2 freaks do a marvelous job of keeping the rodents down
 
Our yard has two cats. We regularly see dismembered mice and rabbits lying around. Sadly we also see birds that they have killed.
 
We have an extremely overfed, borderline obese neutered male cat that lives indoors in front of the fire for the majority of the time. He's a killing machine. Rats, mice and unfortunately birds sometimes. All the rules say he should be useless. He's great. We've also moved house 3 times and he's never wandered.
 
My female cat is an obsessive mouser and I have a picture of her epic " two mice in one (feed bin) pounce somewhere.

I've had a feral cat, but the gamekeeper and tabby cats are not a good combination,sadly. I don't see any traces of mice or rats now due to the combined efforts of cat, jack russell and whippet.
I worry about poison, due to the secondary effect - all animals are at risk if they eat a poisoned rodent, including owls.
 
I think it's a myth that well fed cats won't hunt. I keep three pet cats at a time and at least one of those is a ratter. We find a corpse every couple of years and see no live ones ever. The cats are fed ad lib on freely available wet and dry food. I read some research a looong while ago that because cats kill for fun, a well fed cat will hunt better than a hungry one.
 
ycbm said:
I think it's a myth that well fed cats won't hunt. I keep three pet cats at a time and at least one of those is a ratter. We find a corpse every couple of years and see no live ones ever. The cats are fed ad lib on freely available wet and dry food. I read some research a looong while ago that because cats kill for fun, a well fed cat will hunt better than a hungry one.
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I agree it is a myth. A cat hunts for pleasure. To deal with the biggest rats a cat has to be strong. Some of the biggest rats are very strong. The cat therefore needs good food.
 
My boys live out all year round. Came from a farm, they do try and sneak in but there job is keeping on top of the rodents. They sleep in the Haylage or in the garage. Both are well fed, ( they insist on whiskas , preferably pouches ) strong and love hunting. Our place was a run down dairy farm. The boys moved in first and cleared the place out. Found the odd dead rat for a couple of months, but nothing for over a year. They do leave me headless mice , they love decapitating them and eating them like a creme egg. They've also caught plenty of rabbits and moles too .

We named them Bob and Burt, in hindsight Ronnie and Reggie would have suited them better ��
 
I agree that it is a myth that well-fed cats don't hunt. I have 2 cats that live at home rather than my stable yard, one is known as Biffa as she quite frankly is a bit of a lard*rse and is not known for being overly energetic. However she is an absolute ruthless killing machine (the gamekeeper who lives next door to us saw her with a pheasant) but she wouldn't dream of eating anything she has killed. Instead she leaves it outside the dog's kennel as a treat for him - although he won't touch any of the mice or birds she gives him!
 
we used to feed our ferals on dry food in the morning , top up the dry and a pouch split between them in the evening. they were all well covered but still hunted although I think the girls seemed to be better than the boys at the hunting game. we provided cardboard boxes with bedding in the hay barn and they seemed happy to use them in the winter but not in the summer... 3 of them lived to good ages between 12 and 14 but one was killed prematurely on the road (and he was my favourite!!!!!)
 
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