To control my wife’s flower garden’s rodents’ problems, we adopted a 9 weeks old domestic blue female kitten (so we named her “Blue”) last summer, now 13 months+ old, is quite a natural born hunter. Since the spring thawed and the ground opened up in May, she has already caught 6 chipmunks and one vole with no one to teach her how, great skills to catch them, but hasn’t figured out how to kill (she doesn’t need them for food), and what to do with them, so they all got away. That’s the best outcome I can hope for, the critters escaped, the kitten got her training, and we got a great entertainment.
A red squirrel was busy running around collecting pine seeds into a hole i ...
Tahoe living: survival of the fittest
This poor chipmunk got caught four times. First it got caught by the cat, brought it home and loosed it inside the house, I helped to catch it and put it in a trap. Couldn’t release it with the cat around, so I fed it some pine nuts on a small dish, when I tried to get the dish out of the cage, it got a way. So I setup a trap, caught it a few hour later. I usually release those chipmunks when the cat is not around, but this time it came out of nowhere, the chipmunk got caught again, but through her resilient resisting tactic, it got away again to live for another day, the survival of the fittest. And that's living.
A red squirrel, by my estimate, is about 4 to 5 times ...
Tahoe living: cool cat
A red squirrel was busy running around collecting pine seeds into a hole it dug. Blue has learned that over the summer that she has no ways to catch a squirrel over an open space, so it stayed put, cool cat.
She doesn’t eat them, but hunting is in her DNA, so she goes out hunting every day ...
Tahoe living: Blue’s first squirrel catch
A red squirrel, by my estimate, is about 4 to 5 times bigger than a typical chipmunk, so it is much stronger, energetic and swifter than a chipmunk, and it is more difficult to catch than to catch a chipmunk. Our kitten has grown into a cat. At two-year+ old, her tallies are 61 chipmunks, 2 voles, 2 shrews, 2 birds, and most recently, 1 squirrel caught, and none of them killed.
Ps the snow on the ground is the season first snow fall, winter won't be long now.
It is known that felines are prolific hunters, so is our cat, Blue. At two-year old, she starts to bring home the “bacon.” A good thing about her is that she doesn’t know how to kill, or the meaning of killing, so she always brings her preys home alive! To end her frustrations for losing her preys, (she hasn’t figured out how to transfer her preys from mouth to paws and hold them, so her preys always got away,) I would have to help her to catch them [inside the house], and put them in a trap so I can release them later, “catch and release.”
Blue is two years old now, just passes her birthday; guess she wants to celebrate it in a bold way; I admire her courage and strength, or just her stubbornness? Then she has to spend her first full-night out 50 feet up in a tree, scary, poor thing. Haven’t seen her made same mistake twice; hopefully she learns this one, we’ll see.