Alfie the Mouseketeer!

[llywela]

Alfred the Great caught his first mouse this morning. Life may never be the same again!

Best of all, instead of killing the thing, he brought it home to play, alive, and proceeded to chase it all over the kitchen and hallway before I eventually managed to hold him off and catch it in an empty tissue box. I then had to quickly get dressed and take the mouse down the road to release it back into the wild - no point putting it in the garden, he'd have had it again immediately.

It wasn't even 7am at the time, and it was something stupid like -10 out there! Remember the days when the temperature used to get above freezing? Yeah, good times.

Alfie spent the rest of the morning searching the house for his lost treasure, convinced I'd hidden it somewhere. Neither Poppy nor Macavity even noticed that anything had happened!

Here's hoping this isn't the start of a glorious hunting career for Alfie!

Comments

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

His brothers are all excellent hunters and have been bringing home dead birds for months now - hearing Deb describe what it is like to wake up and find a bloody dead bird at the foot of the bed has always made me enormously grateful that neither of mine seemed capable of catching anything! Poppy, at least, I hope never will - she isn't coordinated enough, bless her. But now that Alfie has had a taste of what it feels like to catch live prey...

When we were growing up, if the cats brought anything home, Mum would just shut it in the kitchen and wait for us to come home from school and make us dispose of it! We soon learned not to be squeamish, simply because she was! But I'd rather not go back to that, if it's all the same to Alfie. *G*

[femsc.livejournal.com]

Shh! Don't tell him you're not squeamish...

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

Good point ;)

[(Anonymous)]

All ours have been hunters, some more successful than others. Sophie excelled herself the other night and left 3 (count the bits of bodies... 8-/) on the doorstep. While not having a catflap can be a pain when they want to go out in the middle of the night, it's also a tremendous boon in not having to clear up dead bodies from the carpet. I'm not in the least bit squeamish about them but I don't like anything being killed.

As for bringing in live ones, Sophie shot in one warm night when the door was open and presented me with a mouse - fortunately I realised before she could put it down and managed to grab it as she did so, but it's a close-run thing!

Carol

[llywela13.livejournal.com]

ICK!

I am hoping that this was a one-off and that Alfie won't now make a habit of it, having got his eye in and a taste for live prey! We used to get creatures brought home all the time when I was growing up, both alive and dead - nothing quite like chasing a panic-stricken bird all around he house with several cats all in hysterics trying to catch it - but I have no desire to return to those days!