Our article is a little longer than usually to answer these three questions :
– How does a cat hunt ?
– How does a cat learn to hunt ?
– Why does my cat offer me his preys ?
A supple body, sharp claws, sharp teeth, an excellent coordination, no doubt, we’re made for hunting. It’s instinctive. Every playing moment is a training to capture a prey, no matter that the target is a string, a leaf, or the ankles of our human.
How does a cat hunt ?
Here is the A-B-C of the hunting cat :
- Choose the good time, rather dawn or twilight.
- Choose the good place.
- Listen to to locate your prey, then let you lying in wait, observe, and wait. Sometimes for a long time.
- When your prey appears, get closer very discreetly. Lower your body by keeping the tail well in the horizontal. Use every shrub, every crevice, every blade of grass to hide.
- Focus your attention on your prey from the point of ears up to the end of whiskers.
- Squat to jump up better. Rock a little your bottom to relax your muscles and guarantee a perfect jump. Capture your prey by a short and precise jump.
- Celebrate your grip and evacuate the stress of the tracking by playing with your prey (optional, but highly recommended) before killing it.
- Enjoy your meal !
How does a cat learn to hunt ?
It’s my mom Razemoquette who taught me how to hunt :
- At the beginning, she brought a dead prey and ate it in front of my sister, my two brothers, and me.
- Then, she put a dead prey in front of us, and let us manage to try to grab something to eat.
- Then, she brought a half dead prey, killed it in front of us, and ate it with us.
- Then she again brought a half dead prey, but this time, we had to try to kill it ourself.
- We repeated several times every stage to train to be good hunters. We also continued our training during our kittens games : fights, ambushes, everything was good to develop our coordination and our capacity to react quickly.
- And when Razemoquette considered that we were ready, and capable of holding us quiet when she asked to us for it, we were able to accompany him in the hunting to perfect our technique.
This is the way I taught how to hunt to Pixie.
Why does my cat offer me his preys ?
Because he loves you ! Poor humans, you are so little talented for hunting ! Sometimes I often mew noisily by coming back with a prey, as my mom Razemoquette did to tell us that dinner was served. I would like that Claire learns how to hunt, that’s why I offer her a prey from time to time to train and get fed. But she doesn’t seem to be hungry : she congratulates me and thanks me, then gives me friendly my prey back (outside !) so that I can eat it myself.
Never scold a cat which brings you a prey : it’s a mark of affection. Congratulate him, and thank him, because he considers you as a member of his family, and takes care of you by sharing his prey as a momcat does with her kittens.
