Is Mr. Boots Immoral AND if so am I Immoral.

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!