Things your cat leaves on the porch.

[Aerows]

I'm not going to post photos, because I just "enjoyed" an offering. It isn't everyone that strolls out on the patio and gets the "gift" of a disemboweled lizard, complete with leaking entrails.

I'm feeling really "blessed". LOL.

What "gifts" do you receive in tribute from your feline?

[fizzgig]

1. none now since mine are indoors

but i found plenty of feathers, mouse guts, half-eaten rodents, grasshoppers and snakes when i was living at dad's. i even had a cat bring me a live baby rabbit once.

[Aerows]

4. My "favorite" was a dying oppossum

It was playing dead, I thought, until the gushing wound in its throat clarified the situation for me. Ugh.

I try to keep her inside, and she is inside at least 18 hours a day to sleep, but she cuts up if she can't go outside and relive her "Crocodile Dundee" fantasies.

[TexasTowelie]

10. With the exception of the snake I have received all of the above including the live baby rabbit.

I also must add geckos to the list, AC (the cat in the lower left corner) loves geckos!

[Aerows]

13. I received a snake once.

Not from this kitty, but from a prior kitty. She brought it in, it was in a ball in her mouth, and she was pleased as punch with herself when she dropped it right on the carpet of the living room.

[fizzgig]

14. dccccccccccccccccccccccccccccw1c 7

that's what fat cat has to say about this.

[CurtEastPoint]

2. Chipmunk this morning on porch; chipmunk tonight, in driveway.

[Aerows]

6. Ick

You have an avid hunter.

[CurtEastPoint]

11. Well, I have 4 outdoor boys and one's about 3 mos old.

I believe it's him. The others are too fat and lazy!

[narnian60]

3. A huge, half-dead rat.

Practically stepped on it on my way out the door to work. I put it in the bathtub, not knowing what else to do. Luckily, it was dead when I came home because what would I have done with it????

[Aerows]

5. Mine brought home a "treasure" like that

Disgusting.

[edgineered]

7. Hearing at 60,000 hz a cat lives in a busier world than we do.

Having eyes specialized to detect the slightest movement even in the darkest of places comes at the cost of seeing only black and white.

In TTC's (The Teaching Company) course on Sensations, Perceptions, and the Aging Process, a cats vision is discussed in the 4 vision lectures and its hearing in 3 others. What they see and hear and how it affects their activities is amazing.

Flipper was obsessed with bringing home the moles he could hear beneath the lawn.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. Cats actually do have some color vision.

"Cats can see some colors, and can tell the difference between red, blue and yellow lights, as well as between red and green lights. Cats are able to distinguish between blues and violets better than between colors near the red end of the spectrum." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_senses

[edgineered]

20. The extent is described in detail in the TTC lectures, here is a little more -

There are a number of cones in the cat's eye. The cones are not limited to the center of the eye as in the human eye, but are spread. So while we can say that cats can see color, think of it in a way that we can smell as compared to a bloodhound. YES, cats can see colors.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~engs13/courseinfo/APA_SamplePaper_KS.doc

One final transformation involves the addition of a new non-human feature that will enhance night vision. The tapetum is a mirror-like membrane in the back of a cat’s eye that reflects light back through the rods, a second time, this time in the opposite direction. The result is a double exposure of the light, which permit cats to see in almost complete darkness.1 In sum, the optimal night vision eye will be unique in several ways: a higher rod to cone ratio, a larger pupil, a greater number of neurons in the eye sending signals to the brain via the optic nerve, and a tapetum membrane.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

23. That paper was interesting but weird -

the author was describing the bioengineering of a third eye that could see at night. Wouldn't it be easier just to train seeing-eye cats?

Oh, wait... train cats.... never mind.

Another interesting thing about cats is their high-frequency hearing. I have a dog-whistle app on my iPhone that I use to mess with them. Obviously they can hear sounds way higher than I can.

[edgineered]

26. Oh, wait... train cats.... never mind.

Yup, meow meow meow - open the damn door silly human!
Meow meow meow - You expect me to squat in that dirty box?

Training is an issue, I agree.

[edgineered]

22. This ref is more detailed (I love cats, and dogs),

Hearing the comparison of our vision and other senses to the cat, and how the experiments were performed simply intrigued me. I'm just adding this link so that those who are sponges like myself can feed on it. (I'm sure you'll check it out, TVO)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10850/

For example, rods produce a reliable response to a single photon of light, whereas more than 100 photons are required to produce a comparable response in a cone. It is not, however, that cones fail to effectively capture photons. Rather, the change in current produced by single photon capture in cones is comparatively small and difficult to distinguish from noise. ... The response of a cone, even to a bright light flash that produces the maximum change in photoreceptor current, recovers in about 200 milliseconds, more than four times faster than rod recovery.

[Aerows]

15. Mine's record for moles

was 8. In one night. Weirdly flattened, I thought, until I realized she was eating their innards. Shudder.

[edgineered]

21. YIKES!!!!

That cat sure loves you!

[ohnoyoudidnt]

8. Many lizards have met their end on my back porch. nt

[Aerows]

19. LOL! n/t

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. Mine are indoor cats, but for some reason

a neighbor's cat left some blue jay bits and feathers on my doormat last summer.

[Aerows]

17. Nothing is quite as "enticing"

as finding the beak of a beheaded cardinal and several mice corpses in the same week

[irisblue]

16. several mouse livers....

when I was in high school we lived next to a field and then it was typical to let cats out. My current and any future ones are in door cats only.

[Aerows]

18. I try my best to keep mine inside

but she grew up outdoors. She's a rescue. She was skin and bones when she first started coming around.

[tabbycat31]

24. My late Tabby used to kill about 5 squirrels a week

But he left them in the neighbor's (not the nice one) yard not ours. We knew it was him though. He was the neighborhood serial killer.

[IrishEyes]

25. Dead mouse

It wasn't my cat. It was my roommate. She had her door closed and mine was open. The cat liked to sleep on my bed. We had a mouse get in the apartment and the cat killed it. She brought it to me as a gift to show what a great hunter she was. She put it on the floor next to my bed. When I woke up, I tried to put my foot on the floor and I stepped directly on the dead mouse. It was not a great way to start the day.

[Aerows]

33. Ewww! n/t

[3catwoman3]

27. All our current 5 are indoor kitties.

I tell them they are trading thier freedom for their longevity, and a damn good deal it is.

Our last indoor-outdoor cat showed up at the door one time, meowing, and I thought is sounded rather muffled but didn't pay close attention. I let him in, after which he released the live baby owl he had in his mouth. No wonder his voice sounded a little different. The owl was unharmed, and flew around the house for quite sometime before I could catch it.

[Laffy Kat]

28. Once my cat brought me "breakfast in bed"

I was sitting up sipping coffee and he jumped on my lap and deposited a live-ish mouse.

[MissB]

29. Perfectly severed mouse heads.

They look so perfect, like someone took the guillotine to them. Not a whisker, eye or ear out of place. Just the head. I don't know what happens to the rest of the mouse when they are decapitated.

One morning we had a head and a tail on our welcome mat.

Mouse head, squirrel tail.

[cyberswede]

30. Our indoor cat would leave cricket heads.

She would catch crickets in the basement & leave their heads at the top of the stairs as gifts. Thanks, Kato!

[hedgehog]

31. It's not the dead gifts on the porch that are the real problems, it's the live ones

in the house: chipmunks, rabbits, birds.

We did find a mummified frog underneath the dogs' kennel; never did figure out how it got there.

[Aerows]

34. Yes I TOTALLY

prefer the dead gifts to the live ones. The dying possum was just "delightful".

[B Calm]

32. dead chipmunks and dead birds

[benld74]

35. A wren with its head missing, countless cicadas,,,,

[DrDan]

36. a neighbor's cat left a rat in the middle of my driveway - where I often park my vehicle

I guess that was a gift

[peacefreak]

37. Years & years ago, a neighbor knocked on my door

& asked me to come outside. He wanted me to see the mousie gifts that my cat had left on the doorsteps of all 8 units in my apartment building. She was just takin' care of business!

[Aerows]

38. She loved everyone! :D

[trof]

39. Squirrel.

Almost as big as Ace was.
Thoroughly dead.
Not a mark on it.
Neck broken, I think.
Good riddance.
MANY more where that one came from.

[Aerows]

40. The gifts we receive

from our feline friends.

[Marthe48]

41. We used to have outside cats

The current crop is 100% inside and I don't miss the 'gifts'. We have bird feeders in the yard and my cats watch the action from the windows.

[WovenGems]

42. Something that had me worried

Came home to find a dead weasel on the porch but the girls weren't waiting for me. When they did return I found not a mark on either. A farmer down the road said he watched two cats for 45 minutes tag team a weasel. He then asked why mine would do that while his barn cats won't. I said mine were well fed and brought me their kills.

[Yavin4]

43. It's not the gifts. It's the thoughts that count.

You people are ungrateful.

[Xipe Totec]

44. What the cat left, the opposum picked up

Hey, a hot meal is a hot meal.



Here is the culprit (MHRIP)

[Jenoch]

45. Years ago we had a cat who caught and killed,

but did not eat, a flying aquirrel.