Most cat owners will be familiar with that feeling of complete dread when something small and possibly dead arrives in the house, courtesy of The Whiskered Assassin.
So why do cats bring in dead animals, sometimes even right to your feet, seemingly as a gift? Here’s the truth of the matter.
A cat loves perfecting their hunting A-game.
No matter how well you think a cat knows you, it’s quite likely they’ll still bring you a dead animal, apparently hoping it will make your day.
This is a characteristic common to all cats. Studies have shown, however, that spayed female cats do this much more often.
Why? Well, hundreds of thousands of years ago, before cats became domesticated, they too lived in the wild and were carnivorous predators.
In order to teach their kittens how to kill and eat animals, the mothers would find and bring prey to them.
First of all, the mothers would bring them dead prey to teach them how to eat it, then prey that’s just clinging to life so they can learn how to kill, and finally very much alive so they can do the whole shabang themselves.
By this time, the mothers would hopefully have raised a litter of fully capable killing machines. In many cases, mother cats would also carry out this process with other kittens that were not hers.
Fast forward to the 21st century and cats are still doing this. The reason? Deep-rooted evolutionary instincts.
Cats lived by this hunting ritual for so long that they still feel they need to do it. And so when they bring a bashed-up mouse or sparrow to us, they’re trying to teach us how to kill too.
Clearly if they bring you a live animal, they’re confident you can finish the job off yourself. Either that or they just like playing with animals.
But an element of wanting to bond with or impress an owner is also involved, which explains why male cats can indulge in this odd behaviour.
Poor unsuspecting animals are not the only things that a cat can drag in to liven up the decor.
Some silly cats have been known to bring their owners objects like tea bags, sponges, gloves, moths, leaves and socks.