I have been having some conflicting emotions about my cat’s
behaviors. First a little background; Boots came into my life about a year ago
by a strange series of events and through even stranger circumstances he is now
our cat! Mr. Boots is a unique cat to say the least, he is the most laid back
cat when he’s indoors, he sleeps, eats, cleans himself, eats some more and
sleeps some more. You could quite literally throw this cat against a wall and
he’d just walk back over and rub against your leg and purr. I have never been
scratched or bit by him. He’s just a lovable cat. He broke every stereotype I
had for cats in the first week, and has been nothing but awesome.
His outdoor behavior is much different, he hunts. He hunts
small game and big game. Mr. Boots started with mice, which quickly became
small song birds, followed by squirrels, and now recently larger birds; blue
jays and pigeons. He’s not killing them for food, though he tends to get a
taste in, he hunts for fun and tortures these still alive animals in the cutest
way imaginable. This is where my moral dilemma comes to be, I have pride when
he brings his dead animals to our door and offers them to us. But, watching his
killing process is border line sadistic. Once the animal is tired and wounded
he backs up away from the maimed animal and crouches waiting for it to make a
move and than when (in the instance of the last bird) it goes to make flight,
he two paw bats it down and stomps it’s body. Than he rolls with what has to be
a smile on his back beside the now more wounded animal and paws at it with same
playfulness he shows when you dangle a string in front of him. This goes on for
upwards of an hour at times, until the exhausted animal finally takes his last
breath and Boots promptly bring his prize to the door or in the case of the
first squirrel to the foot of my bed.
So what should I do, when I see the wounded animal put it
out of its misery? I don’t get to see all the killings so that doesn’t solve
the problem. I could put a bell on his collar giving the prey a little notice,
but what than will that do to Boots, he is a hunter, and I don’t want to take
that away from him. I don’t know what to do. For now I will do nothing, when
ever I see Boot’s dead bounty I find myself humming the Elton John’s “Circle of
Life”, and that makes it just a little bit better when I am going to sleep and
I have a murdering, sadistic, psychopathic house cat spooning me!
